Conclusions

Abstract

Provenance testing showed that Douglas-fir was the only species of conifer to prove acceptable. In Dothistroma pini and the opossum, slow growth and poor wood quality were often disastrous, yet radiata pine largely withstood them. Southern coastal provenances of Douglas-fir performed better than Washington. The breeding programme was thus put on hold for over 20 years but was resurrected by coastal selections from the 1959 trials. Eucalypt work in E. regnans, E. fastigata and E. nitens started in 1975 with early selection for growth and against frost damage. Kraft pulps of E. regnans, E. fastigata and E. nitens were all low on bulk. Radiata pine breeding strategy from 1953 showed intensive plus-tree selection. A drastic change in 1968 was towards 1.5 generation orchards with 600 trees selected and OP tested. At age 5 years, 100 of the best offspring were ‘forwards’ selected, not for advanced generation breeding but for another seed orchard. The 1986 Development Plan proposed more, future-cloned, within-family ‘forwards’ selection for AS. Control-pollinated seed orchards were an important new technology. The RPBC has tested 360 OP forwards-selected OPs from progeny tests over 11 sites in NZ and Australia. They are conserving genetic variability in their breeding population (effectively closed) with the use of within-family selection combined with cloning.