Optimum neighborhood seed orchard design

Abstract

Original seed orchard algorithm “Optimum Neighborhood Seed Orchard Design” was developed as local heuristics to facilitate the establishment of advanced-generation seed orchards with complex configurations. The scheme leads to uniform spatial distribution among adjacent genetic entries, promoting panmixia. The resulting scheme is thus suitable to establishing both productive seed orchards as well as clonal archives of threatened species, etc. Further, it can accommodate variable clonal sizes, uneven grids, relatedness, assortative mating. It may supplement existing layouts (clonal rows, etc.). Layouts outperformed existing advanced-generation alternative schemes in most parameters and thus could be recommended to operational forestry and gene conservation management.