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Establishment of a quasi-field trial in Abies nordmanniana—test of a new approach to forest tree breeding

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Abstract

This study used DNA markers to establish a quasi-field trial within a production Christmas tree stand produced from seed collected in an open-pollinated clonal seed orchard (CSO). A total of 660 offspring from the CSO, which comprised 99 clones of Abies nordmanniana, were genotyped with 12 microsatellites. Parentage was assigned successfully to 93% and 98% of the progeny at 95% and 80% confidence, respectively. The assignment rate declined only to 90% when the number of markers was reduced to 10. The distribution of parentage to the offspring among the CSO clones was highly skewed. The most successful clone was assigned as parent in 7% of the cases, and only 92 of the 119 potential parental genotypes were assigned as parents. The obtained pedigree was used to estimate breeding values for the CSO clones for five characters relevant for Christmas tree breeding. For high-heritability traits, such as flushing, accurate breeding values could be estimated for a considerable proportion of the clones. To estimate breeding values for low-heritability traits, such as Christmas tree quality score, more genotyped offspring will be required. The largest drawback of the method is the highly skewed distribution of parentage among the parents in the seed orchards, making it difficult to calculate breeding values for all clones. The approach seems well suited for tree breeding that puts more emphasis on pure selection of parental genotypes and less on estimating quantitative genetic parameters.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Sune Graae Norsker, estate manager of Collet and Co., Lundbygaard for letting us use his Christmas tree stand and Jens Stevn for letting us work in his CSO FP1100. Argelia Cuenca Navarro was so kind to help collecting needle samples in FP1100. Johan Kroon and Gunnar Jansson, both SKOGFORSK in Sweden, provided valuable input on the quantitative data analysis. We are indebted to Luis Apiolaza, University of Canterbury, who has guided us with vital suggestions for the quantitative data analysis. We thank lab technician Lena Byrgesen for doing the hundreds of DNA extractions and Hans Kristian Kromann for taking the field measurements at Lundbygaard. Ulrik Bräuner Nielsen, Jon Kehlet Hansen and Erik Kjær, colleagues at Forest and Landscape Denmark, are acknowledged for comments and discussion during this work. The input from two anonymous reviewers and the associate editor Rowland Burdon helped in improving the manuscript.

The study was funded by the Danish Research Council for Technology and Production Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning, University of Copenhagen, Hørsholm Kongevej 11, 2970, Hørsholm, Denmark

    Ole K. Hansen & Lea V. McKinney

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  1. Ole K. Hansen
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  2. Lea V. McKinney
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Correspondence to Ole K. Hansen.

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Communicated by R. Burdon.

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Hansen, O.K., McKinney, L.V. Establishment of a quasi-field trial in Abies nordmanniana—test of a new approach to forest tree breeding. Tree Genetics & Genomes 6, 345–355 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-009-0253-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-009-0253-6

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