The meeting 2005 of the Nordic group for management of genetic resources of trees

By: Dag Lindgren

The meeting was held in Syktyvkar , Komi Republic , Russia , at September 13-15, 2005. Syktyvkar is situated around 1000 km north-east of Moscow . The meeting was arranged by Institute of Biology , Komi Scientific Centre of Ural Division of Russian Academy of Sciences. Main organiser was Dr Aleksey Fedorkov. The theme was: “Status, monitoring and targets for breeding programs”. It was the first meeting of this group ever in Russia . Northern Russia harbours a larger gene resource than the Nordic countries combined for their economically most important crops: northern Scots pine and Norway spruce, besides being home to Siberian larch and other useful species. This relevant gene resource has been poorly tested in the Nordic countries, but now experiments are being initiated.

There were 41 participants from Denmark , Estonia , Finland , Latvia , Norway , Poland , Sweden and Russia . During two indoor days 23 oral presentations and 7 posters were presented. Proceedings from the meeting will appear soon. During a field trip experiments, seed orchards and a forest museum was visited.

Exchange of genetic resources between Komi and north Scandinavia has been initiated, examples of that was seen during the excursion: 1) an experiment with Swedish Scotch pine plus tree progenies together with Russian material; 2) an experiment in preparation with material from Swedish seed orchard harvests of lodgepole pine; 3) a stand with nice larch plus trees, which are used for SIBLARCH, a northern periphery international project with coordination from Sweden.

Nordic forest genetic/tree breeder meetings supported by Nordic sources have a long tradition, although the actual name and organisation varied. Now the function is taken over by GENECAR. Let's hope coming meetings will be as successful as this one.