Genetic correlations among juvenile wood quality and growth traits and implications for selection strategy in Pinus radiata D. Don

Abstract

• Juvenile wood quality in Pinus radiata is affected by factors such as low density, stiffness, and high microfibril angle, spiral grain, and shrinkage. Adverse genetic correlations between growth and wood quality traits remain as one of the main constraints in radiata pine advanced generation selection breeding program. • Juvenile wood property data for this study were available from two progeny tests aged 7 and 6 y. We estimated the genetic correlations between stiffness, density, microfibril angle, spiral grain, shrinkage in the juvenile core and DBH growth in radiata pine, and) to evaluated various selection scenarios to deal with multiple objective traits. • Negative genetic correlations were found for modulus of elasticity (MoE) and density with microfibril angle, spiral grain, shrinkage, and DBH. We observed low to moderate unfavourable genetic correlations between all wood quality traits and DBH growth. • These low to moderate genetic correlations suggest that there may be some genotypes which have high DBH growth performance while also having high wood stiffness and density, and that the adverse correlation between DBH and MoE may not entirely prohibit the improvement of both traits. Results indicate that, in the short term, the optimal strategy is index selection using economic weights for breeding objective traits (MAI and stiffness) in radiata pine. • In the long-term, simultaneously purging of the adverse genetic correlation and optimizing index selection may be the best selection strategy in multiple-trait selection breeding programs with adverse genetic correlations.