Selection Criteria
The particular features that translate into enhanced financial benefits desired by forest growers are:
- Faster growth rates, resulting in increased yields of timber, or alternatively, reductions of 2-3 years in the forest crop rotation length
- Increased levels of timber stiffness in both corewood and outerwood, resulting in improved wood quality, and higher log prices
- Increased levels of clear-cutting grades, resulting in higher premiums for sawn timber
- Increased levels of resistance to pine diseases, including Dothistroma needle blight, affecting up to 20% of radiata pine.
It is now possible for the forest grower to select a particular Production Variety that delivers the required features, resulting in trees of higher commercial value to buyers and/or maximum carbon sequestration for environmental gains. |
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