Building a better pine plantation

A federal forest in Mississippi was chosen to house a loblolly pine gene bank, and an Oregon forest will hold a similar collection of Douglas fir diversity. Thousands of grafts will be grown as a living genetic archive, and researchers will work with the diverse lines to identify and understand genotypes. Artificial breeding will be used to find and propogate vigorous hybrids. The U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) awarded six million dollars to a team headed by David Neale of the University of California-Davis, who will work through U.S. Forest Service research stations in Saucier, Miss. and Corvallis, Ore. to develop the experimental and archival stocks. The Forest Service is a USDA agency. Genetic catalogs exist for several food crops and a hardwood tree, but these will be the first conifers sequenced.