Forestry

The Spruce-Up Project targets the affects of global warming by utilizing phenotypic traits and comparative genomics to identify and validate biomarkers for resistance to biotic and abiotic stress. The overarching goal of Spruce-Up was to produce new/enhanced genomics and socioeconomic information for development, validation, and implementation of biomarkers/Genomic Selection (GS) systems to accelerate spruce breeding […]

Climate change is impacting forest health and productivity. Trees will be poorly adapted to their future environment if we stick to the status quo practice of using seed from local populations for reforestation. The goals of this project are: (1) to use genomic tools combined with experiments to testing trees’ resistance to heat, cold, drought

Both productivity and sustainability of our forest ecosystems and operations are reliant on a healthy and resilient forest. However, forest health and local communities that depend on the forest industry are both under constant threat from changes in climate and climate-induced insect outbreaks. The pace of these changes is outstripping the ability for trees to