Tree Biotechnology
in the New Millennium
July 22-27, 2001

Meeting Context

Forest trees play critical roles in the lives of humans and functioning of ecosystems. They provide renewable sources of wood, fiber, energy, and chemicals for human societies. They provide habitat for numerous organisms and essential ecological functions such as water purification and carbon storage. Forests are managed in a diversity of ways around the globe, ranging from intensively managed, short rotation tree-farms to old-growth preserves. The goals for management, particularly the balance between anthropocentric and ecocentric values, is everywhere the subject of much debate and analysis. Whatever the goals for forest management and conservation, however, the methods of molecular biology and genetic modification provide powerful options for understanding, management, and breeding.

The growing demands and stresses on forests imposed by human societies, and the environmental values provided by renewable wood-derived products, insures that planted, managed forests will continue to be prominent around the globe. Genetic technologies have the clear potential to enable greater production of wood from those areas designated for intensive wood production, and to provide new methods for producing forests better able to withstand biotic and abiotic stresses that threaten their integrity. Research, including its dissemination and public evaluation, is essential to bring these goals to fruition in an efficient and sustainable manner.

The IUFRO has convened international meetings on molecular biology and genetics of forest trees since 1985, when the technology for gene transfer into plants was first developed. The IUFRO Unit (http://iufro.boku.ac.at/iufro/iufronet/d2/hp20406.htm) on Molecular Biology of Forest Trees is concerned with all aspects of molecular methods for study and manipulation of forest trees. Included are:

• Use of molecular markers for ecogenetic studies
• DNA marker-based breeding and selection
• Molecular and genomic studies of tree physiology and development
• In-vitro culture and asexual gene transfer methods
• Silvicultural studies of genetically modified trees

Summary of previous IUFRO conferences on molecular biology of forest trees


Forest Biotechnology '99