Details concerning Seed Orchard Conference

This conference has not a very high profile. There is no Organising Committee (although some unofficial informal discussions occur). There is no Official Scientific Committee. It is voluntary to submit abstracts and proceeding texts. If a participant submits something, it is mostly only to me, and I was benign when it comes to accepting contributions so no-one has been denied for another reason than passed the deadline (but I am not quite sure how I will react when it comes to proceedings, and it may happen that I argue). There are no invited speakers (although I have taken initiatives and had discussions). All speakers are treated democratically equal and the lectures will mainly come in the maximum democratic and simple way - alphabetic. The proceedings will be the simplest possible (electronic on the web). I did not seek IUFRO blessing until it did not matter for participation. I have not informed about the conference on FORESTGEN until it was too late to attract speakers (I still thought that it was fair to let the whole forest genetic community know about it). I only aimed for a limited number of presentations and participants to make the arrangements manageable enough for me to handle alone and to facilitate interfacing of participants. As a professional and professor in forest genetics I am off course happy to get 37 lectures and 90 participants, but it feels as more than I asked for. That means that the room for other types of socialisation than listening to lectures will be limited, and for some it may appear as not ideal. The organised lunches and refreshment and poster sessions will be simple. No conclusions from the meeting or summing up of the sessions are planned at the meeting (although hopefully some of the TREEBREEDEX participants will report something to Activity 6 in TREEBREEDEX). I did not plan prizes or awards for the best contributions or similar, but now I got some ideas maturing, we'll see... There are no great outdoor facilities at Umeå, at least not that late in the autumn, and it is unlikely we will visit them. Participants will not get fancy conference bags or presents. The theme is narrow enough to avoid parallel sessions. Thus it seems to be a conference only for seed orchard fanatics, those who just want experiences away from home in a nice and fancy environment should probably go somewhere else.

See http://daglindgren.upsc.se/Breed_Home_Page/ for light and temperature climate at Umeå Sept 27. The day length is 11.86 hours and the average temperature 5.06 degrees centigrade. However, as the average temperature was based on temperature records 1960-1990, we probably have to add 0.4 degrees for "global" warming, and thus expect 5.5.

Currency
The legal currency in Sweden is Swedish Crowns (SEK), that was the will among the people in a referendum, and probably it is easier and more convenient to pay with that. Ordinary all larger expenses can be paid by credit card (probably even cabs), and Swedish cash may seldom be needed. FOREX at Arlanda will buy and sell cash. There are cash machines for getting Swedish cash from your card e,g, on Stockholm and Umeå airport. We however accept only SEK if you want to pay the conference fee in cash. If not it is OK that we send an invoice later, but we will increase the participation fee 200 SEK for that service.

Application of DNA based tools for genetic research, molecular breeding, and management and monitoring of genetic resources

Link to the meeting homepage Link to GENECAR (a Nordic Cooperative Organisation). Another meetings on Umeå campus; which visitors to the seed orchard meeting may be interested in visiting also. Two meetings at the travel cost and trouble of one! Öystein Johnsen/Tore Myking are organisers.

The participants got a message: Greece fires: A new Greek tragedy has happened. Greece has lost forests over a large area by fire. There must arise an urgent need of fast reforestation. One of the participants in our conference is involved in Greece seed matters (Evi Alizoti). Could this conference do anything useful? E.g. transmitting experiences to Evi.

Evi's description: On most of the forested land, a Mediterranean pine species was growing, namely Pinus halepensis. The species, which grows naturally throughout the whole mainland of Greece (and we have provenance-progeny tests results), has the ability to withstand forest fires and regenerate naturally after fire, due to its closed serotineous cones that open after the fire and spread their protected seed. So, according to our long experience abundant natural regeneration appears the first year after fire and we reforestation artificially only in cases that nature fails and with local genetic material. The greatest problem is with a natural Pinus pinea forest, and with the Abies forests that were burned that don't regenerate naturally. So, a strategy has been developed to handle these two issues. Most of the actions now are focused on works in the burned areas aiming towards avoiding the soil depletion due to the fall rainfalls, which is a critical issue as most of the area is mountainous with quite steep slopes.

As an example; in Sweden large areas were slashed by a storm (Gudrun) two years ago, among actions was to wake up a closed down nursery and to ask EU to rush a request for importing Belarus seeds. Is where documentation in English about the handling and evaluation of such actions of possible relevance available? Or some other ideas?

I got one response by email
"As for Greece tragedy, I would recommend, just as an idea, that one of conclusions of our conference could be formulated as recommendation for money contribution from every participant’s national sources (from individual various ministries funds, etc.), including corresponding EU funds, and so on. They need just money, in Greece, according my opinion."