Newsletter Dec 02

These newsletters are edited and distributed at irregular intervals by Dag Lindgren. Email if you want to be added or removed from the mailing list or your email-address changed. If things do not work, try to use the variant from the web instead! An URL address to this Newsletter is:
http://daglindgren.upsc.se/Newsletters/Newsletter02to03/Newsletter_Dec02.htm
(the links have sometimes to be copied and pasted, note that they may be broken on two lines)

 

New PhDs!

The latest and maybe last PhD thesis in a line of thesis I have supervised is now ready and available to the world!

To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Helsinki, for public criticism in Viikki, Auditorium B2, on the 13th of December 2002, at 12 o’clock.

Ruotsalainen, S. 2002. Managing breeding stock in the initiation of a long-term tree breeding program. Finnish Forest Research Institute, Research Papers 875., 95 + 61 p. Pressmeddelande på svenska

I go from Helsinki to USA Saturday 14th at 8, when the job is finished. I try to convince the Finns that the honourable way is to have a party till it is time for me to leave for the airport, but as it seems with little success (my daughter mumbled something about 60 year crises).

 

It seems that Finland now spits out Forest Genetic doctors at an impressive speed. Martti Venäläinen will present his dissertation January 23 and Carlos Navarro (from Costa Rica) will also come very soon. Finnarna i Punkaharju är mycket internationella och utgör en bro mellan öst och väst, Ruotsalainen betyder svensk och Venäläinen ryss.

 

 

DISPUTATION I BIOLOGI med inriktning skogsgenetik

 

Härmed tillkännages att litauiske jägmästaren Virgilijus Baliuckas, Institutionen för skogsgenetik vid SLU i Uppsala, kommer att disputera för skoglig doktorsexamen fredagen den 13 december 2002, kl 10.00, Aulan, Genetikcentrum, SLU i Uppsala, på en avhandling med titeln

Life History Traits and Broadleaved Tree Genetics

Avhandlingen finns tillgänglig på Institutionen för skogsgenetik, SLU i Uppsala och på Ultunabiblioteket fr o m den 22 november 2002.

Opponent är professor Tore Skröppa, Norsk Institutt for Skogforskning.

 

It is a coincidence, but Gösta's(?) maybe last thesis is presented at almost the same hour as my maybe last, BUT I am an hour later!

 

 

FAO and biotech…

 E-mail conference on biotechnology and agricultural research

 

  The FAO Inter-Departmental Working Group on Biotechnology invites you to join an e-mail conference entitled "What should be the role and focus of biotechnology in the agricultural research agendas of developing countries?",  that runs for 4 weeks, from 13 November to 11 December 2002.

  See http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp <http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp>  for details on how to join.

 

FAO Home Page: http://www.fao.org <http://www.fao.org>

Report on Forest Resources (FRA 2000):

http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/main/index.jsp

<http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/main/index.jsp>

State of the World's Forests 2001:

http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/sofo/SOFO2001/sofo2001-e.stm

<http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/sofo/SOFO2001/sofo2001-e.stm>

 

 

Invest in tree planting for the future!

I got a pamphlet encouraging investment in teak orchards. The home page is
http://www.teakinvest.se/
An investment in teak plantations is predicted to grow with at least 12.7%, besides ethically and socially favourable effects. Maybe those guys, who write prospects for investments in our Swedish seed orchards, has something to learn here? However, the pamphlet or homepage did not inform about from where the seeds came or how large part of the investment, which goes into tree improvement. Maybe such an investment would make the operation still more profitable, and maybe someone should tell them?

 

The future of forest genetics at SLU?

There are still discussions about a research school, the idea move slowly forwards. Forest genetics at our University urgently needs (since the last two years) some sort of support or external energy injection to survive at a decent level. One important reason for the need of support is withdrawn funding from the University, but there are other reasons too that we seem unable to survive unsupported. Umeå got a significant injection by that Bengt Andersson serves as adjunct professor at our department 20%, and that works very well, but the hope that this should draw additional resources to "non-molecular" genetics has not materialised. "Föreningen" seem willing to help in "in principle", and has reserved rather large sums for the purpose, but this is still on the planning and negotiating and application stage, while our actual resources erodes fast. Umeå genetics has now lost more than half of the strength we had three years ago and the prognosis for coming year looks bad. Does the system wants to get rid of existing structures and individuals before investing in new, or why does it move so painfully slow if it really want to help? I have decided to downgrade my activities and adapt to a more limited role. I have been unable to help and feel I may be regarded as part of the problem, this will leave the field more open. I had five visiting scientists this autumn, but I go down to about one from now. One step is my sabbatical to the US. Another to reduce these newsletters.

 

Conferences

A conference: Forest Station methods, results, prospects will be arranged in Komi, Russia Sept 2003. Internet information at
http://ib.komisc.ru/conf/forest-03/en.html

Umeå Plant Science Centre arranges the IUFRO meeting Tree Biotechnology 2003. The web site for the meeting is now updated. Visit www.treebiotech2003.norrnod.se for general information about the meeting and for information about registration and abstract submission etc.

Kyu-Suk Kang participated in the meeting in Slovakia on Population and Evolutionary Genetics of Forest Tree Species and noted that it was only one Swedish participant, (from University of Göteborg, works with Fraxinus spp.). Alfred Szmidt and Xiao-Ru Wang were also where, but I do not count them as SLU or hardly Swedish any more. On the SNS clone meeting in Scotland Anders Fries was the only participant from SLU. This adds to the impression that funding reductions, in particular the drastic cut downs at SLU, has now badly reduced Sweden's role on the international arena of forest genetics. Unfortunately those in charge do not see the urgency of the break down of Forest Genetic research in Sweden.

 

Flooding and forest genetics

I got a comment on the September Newsletter Flooding and forest genetics

Like this (in edited form):

 

Our hypothesis here is that large trees, which are well adapted to a particular selective environment, will take up, consume and evaporate relatively more water (large trees have large root system and larger biomass, meaning higher water consumption and larger evaporation surface). If this hypothesis is true, then breeding effort can give a result, as heritability for growth is reasonably high.

 

The breeding targets then would be (1) adaptedness to perform as we want under overmoisture conditions (= water uptake even under access conditions so that the water is evaporated), I mean that then the trees may serve as sort of tubes to evaporate the water to the air. However, it may be so that under water access conditions, trees would simply stop taking up water and then it is little use of them. So the fist question to answer is how do trees behave under overmoisture conditions and if they do not take up more water than they need, can this be changed so that they take up water and evaporate most of it, (2) simple breeding towards larger trees by paying more attention to the size of the crown (leave biomass area) not only stem straightness and etc.

 

Is progeny testing worthwhile?  No-one wanted to defend progeny-testing (e.g. as it is suggested in the Swedish tree breeding) in response to my challenge in the September newsletter. Well, actually I believe it can be defended, but it might have been interesting to discuss the arguments in greater depth.

Course for undergraduates

The course for undergraduates at Umeå about Forest Tree Breeding and seed supply (5 Swedish points) autumn 2002 attracted 9 students who made the test. My guess at the moment is that it will be repeated November 2003.

 

Environmental releases of GMO

Environmental releases (field trial licences) in EU for all plants. It struck me that the interest for tests with GMO outdoors is sinking radically. Below follows a table I am unsure if it will work with E-mail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


For how long will these newsletters remain?

I sent information about a seminar at Umeå to this list. I got about the same number of replies as on an ordinary Newsletter all expressing some type of interest. It was interesting information even for some of those who did not dream of participating. We directly got one participant more in response to the information in the newsletter. So perhaps I should go on with the newsletter, but focused just on when something of interest happens at Umeå?

I intend to go on a sabbatical to US Dec 12, and when I intended to terminate this service. Further five subscribers (beyond three in response to previous "threats") asked me to continue, but it is probably too late.  I realise that a few of the subscribers are interested in my location in USA and if I get my email to work, so I may write a New Year's letter with that information. The newsletters also serves the function to express my own thoughts and reflections on matters, and I may feel a need to do that in the autumn 2003, so I may interpret what has happened, in particular concerning the very dramatic down sizing forest genetics is experiencing for the last years when (and if) this downsizing has stabilised (as I did in closing the files on our "biochemical genetics", which I now consider completely closed down).