Abstract
Norway spruce is one of the main components of the boreal forest and a major source of wood products in Sweden. A large proportion of Central and Southern Sweden spruce stands were created with seeds imported from Belarus, Germany and Poland, which have a different phenology than local provenances. The exact extent to which this material contributed to the Swedish breeding program, however, remains disputed, though our own partial genotyping results suggest that this contribution was important. In the present project we will genotype all plus trees used to create the Swedish Norway spruce breeding program for southern and central Sweden in order to identify their origin. We will also take advantage of the large amount of progeny testing done on those trees to compare introduced and local material for two traits of high adaptive significance, bud set and bud flush. In particular we will map genes associated to the variation in those two traits. These data, together with data on clinal variation in bud set and bud flush, will provide precious information on the adaptive potential of trees faced with a new environment that will be used to provide guidelines to reorganize the breeding program for climate change. These guidelines will be developed with stakeholders during the project.
Sweden