Improving the value chain for plantation-grown eucalypt sawn wood in China, Vietnam and Australia: Genetics and silviculture

The joint FST/1999/95 and FST/2001/21 project inception meeting was held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China in December 2006. It was held over two days to coincide with the ITTO / IUFRO meeting "International Conference on Plantation Eucalytpus: Challenge in Product Development". The meeting was attended by 34 people representing project partners and other interested stakeholders.

The meeting served two purposes:
Updating the current state of knowledge: each project partner made presentations of their current research and development, as well as advancements in technologies for assessing wood quality.
Detailed planning of project trial assessments and identification of training needs in each of the partner organisations.

After the inception meeting project partners were trained in two non-destructive wood property assessment techniques in a clonal trial in Dongmen Forestry Farm. A total of 61 trees representing 15 clones were assessed in the trial. The historical growth data along with this wood quality data was analysed to bench mark the single clone represented in Dongmen Experiement 84, a spacing and fertiliser trial that is the focus of the project's first main detailed wood quality assessment in China planned for September 2006. In support of the planned assessment Guangxi Forestry Research Institute and Dongmen Forestry Farm assessed growth and form in Experiment 84. This data was analysed and used to identify trees that will be sampled in the future wood quality assessment. At the inception meeting the private pulp and paper company Stora Enso Forestry Guangxi agreed to support the project by providing pulp wood assessment of trees harvested in trials E73 and E84. This will enable the project to evaluate the impact of silviculture on pulp wood production and quality in addition to the projects focus on solid wood.

Project work in Australia kicked off with the assessment of a Eucalyptus pilularis progeny trial, with support from Australia's Forest and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation (supporting drying and wood chemistry evaluation) and the CRC for Forestry (supporting molecular genetic work) the study will be the most comprehensive study into the genetic control of wood properties of Eucalyptus completed to date. Standing tree assessment of the trial was completed in June 2006 after approximately 9 months of field work. This project provided the opportunity to train two Chinese scientists in non-destructive techniques for the assessment of wood properties.

Dang Phouc Dai - a project scientist from Vietnam - was awarded a John Allright Fellowship to study for a PhD at Southern Cross University. His studies will be on genetic variation in growth and wood properties in Eucalyptus pellita in Vietnam and Australia. Li Bohai, Chen Shaoxiong and Luo Jianzhong, all key members of the project team in China, will study for PhDs in Chinese universities. Their studies will directly be related to the project's activities and goals.

The 2006/2007 financial year saw the project complete several major wood quality assessments in key trials in all partner countries (China, Vietnam and Australia). Trials across a range of Eucalyptus species in silvicultural and genetics have been assessed for a range of wood properties. Harvested logs with known wood properties from all of these trials were provided to FST/2001/021 for a range of sawing, veneer and drying trials. Results of the genetic and silvicultural traits of wood properties are still being analysed as well as the evaluation of a range of non-destructive assessment techniques.

Wood quality assessments were complete on the following trials as part of the project:

Australia:
Eucalyptus nitens Provenance Trial (17 years)
Eucalyptus pilularis Progeny Trial (9 years)

Vietnam:
Eucalyptus urophylla Progeny Trial (10 years)
Eucalyptus pellita Progeny Trial Vietnam - pilodyn only (6 years)

China:
Eucalyptus urophylla x grandis Spacing and Fertiliser Trial (13 years)
Eucalyptus Hybrid Clone Trial (15 years)

Preliminary results of the studies have been presented at conferences and workshops in China and Australia, and it is hoped that many of the results will be published in peer reviewed journals. Results from an assessment of a spacing fertiliser trial in Guangxi southern China suggested that variations in establishment spacing resulted in major diameter differences with minimal impact on the fundamental wood properties.

A plan for additional work was prepared for the Hunan Forestry Department (one of the Chinese project partners) in December 2006, and the Hunan team have received additional provincial funding to enable them to complete the work plan. This will allow Hunan to establish and assess additional species, genetic and silvicultural trials over the life time of the project.

With the majority of the large wood quality assessments now complete the project is now moving in to a phase of analysis, modelling and evaluation of the economics of the results working in close collaboration with the team of FST/2001/021 in the three countries.

Training was provided to both Vietnamese and Chinese collaborators "in-country" in the use of standing tree and log assessment techniques to evaluate wood property. In both countries there has been considerable uptake of these methods, where in China several MSc theses have been completed utilising equipment and methods provided by ACIAR. With co-funding from ATSE Crawford Fund two Chinese and one Vietnamese collaborator attended the inaugural Australasian Forests Genetic Conference in Hobart, Tasmania where several papers were presented on work associated with project FST/1999/096. After the conference the three delegates attended a course on using the statistical package ASREML for the analysis of genetic trials. This was followed by a week's course in non-destructive assessment of standing tree wood quality in northern NSW hosted by Forests NSW and Southern Cross University.

The project has now successfully applied for John Alright Fellowships for three MSc and three PhD scholarships, the first students arrived in Australia in September 2007 and all of the projects are associated with improving our understanding of the control of wood properties in sub-tropical and tropical eucalypt species as well as improving methods of mass propagation of elite genetic material to ensure the rapid and cost effective deployment of improved material.