Progress of gene conservation of Norway spruce (Picea abies Karst.) in Sweden

Lennart Ackzell

The discussion following the network’s last meeting in Finland 1996 revealed the crucial and necessary and yet so difficult task to develop national strategies for international gene conservation. To co-ordinate actions like networks of archives when the national conditions puts firm limitation on what can be achieved is problematic. These national conditions are often very time dependent but the operational and strategic gene conservation has to be done within our systems. An awareness of these very different conditions is a needed base for mutual understanding as well as a frame out of which initiatives like EUFORGEN can give a supporting hand.

From the discussion in Finland we have found reasons to explain certain Swedish conditions. Here we have only 5% of State forests, mainly low productive forest close to the mountain range. Forest companies manage 45% and private owners 50% of the forestland. This implies that general political declaration of protected conservation areas become extremely costly and the means we have at our disposal is agreements with the landowners or legal measures.

We have in the Swedish Forest Gene Conservation Programme agreements with different landowners for the establishments of 67 Picea abies plantations and 6 clonal archives. These agreements consists simply of that the Programme ensure the establishment of the sampled origins and that the landowner do not add other origins, provide access to material and for measurements by scientists or public servants and accept to notify the authorities before cutting. The timber is the landowners.

Since the meeting in Finland-96 the clonal archives, which are around 10 years old have been tended to ensure a successful survival and development of the young ramets. The local extension service have been more engaged in the management and supervision of both the clonal archives as well as the plantations.

The legal measures includes basically the official approving of seed sources, restrictions on clonal forestry and restrictions on movements of forest reproductive material. In Sweden we found the OECD category "Source Identified" a helpful tool for genetic diversity in our managed forests. For clonal forestry of Picea abies the lower limits in a clonal plantation is 29 clones. We have movements’ restrictions and we believe we have to make the plant buyers aware of the need to ask for information about origin or provenance to avoid genotypes with low adaptation.

Contact EUFORGEN Secretariat about this page