Creswick Time Travellers Could Save Trees
Media Release, Monday 6 June 2005
Time twisting forest researchers at the University of Melbourne are turning the clock forward thousands of years to dramatically accelerate the time it takes to study new varieties of trees.
Dr Gerd Bossinger and his team from the School of Forest and Ecosystem Science at Creswick in Victoria, have developed new techniques to assess mature wood properties in just months, instead of decades.
Dr Bossinger describes the new technology as a breakthrough in the way researchers can quickly breed better trees for commercial production and potentially reduce Australia’s current reliance on the harvesting of native forests.
He says the mature characteristics of trees can be predicted while they are still in the laboratory, instead of waiting 20 or 30 years for the tree to grow.
“At the moment, finding and optimising commercially desirable traits is inefficient,” says Dr Bossinger.”
“Using the latest techniques developed at the School of Forest and Ecosystem Science, new tree varieties that show useful characteristics can be selected for further development, while varieties that lack the desired characteristics can be discarded.”
“Forest scientists are at the stage farmers were about 10,000 years ago.”
“Modern molecular techniques mean we won’t have to wait another 10,000 years to reach the same understanding of tree breeding” says Dr Bossinger.”
“It has enormous potential to not only improve the processing of pulpwood, but to also increase the versatility of Australia’s hardwood plantations for furniture making and structural purposes.”
The research is being done in collaboration with Victoria’s Department of Sustainability and Environment and has attracted substantial support from the Forest and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation, the Australian Research Council and other partners around the world.
Contact:
Dr. Gerd Bossinger
School of Forest and Ecosystem Science
University of Melbourne
Tel: +61 3 5321 4176
Email: gerd@unimelb.edu.au
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