0:00 Stephen Goodfellow: Controlled Mass Pollination (CMP) in the Southeastern United States
21:11 Courtney McDonald: JDI’s Controlled Mass Pollination with White Spruce
40:38 Victoria Lei: Testing, Testing 1, 2, 3!
58:40 Dave Kolotelo: Seed Research Interpretations & Pitfalls
1:16:40 Morning Question & Answer Period
Right we hope to have some opportunities during the day to have some group questions we’re going to play that by year but uh please contact the speakers you’re interested in asking questions of um I’m really excited about our next two talks both focusing on control pollinations I think this is an
Incredible tool especially in British Columbia as we look for more specialized programs especially as we look for pest resistance Beyond volume so our first speaker is Step Goodfellow and you all have very complete bios of people so I’m being very brief in terms of what I’m saying because you don’t want me reading
Up here um so Stephen Goodfellow and I think you have a another mic and am I hot testing all right well good morning guys um I don’t think I won the award for traveling the farthest but uh I came from Texas um so I I tra a little little ways
Out here um um I’m going to talk a little bit about CMP in the Southeast and how we’re effective with it um little press the green one controller here is that on sorry guys put in the computer Maybe okay I’ll just back for you okay we’ll get through
This um yeah so a little background on me I got my undergrad in Forestry at a small school in East Texas I got a master’s at Mississippi State in Forest genetics started out my career with IFCO seedlings you guys may be a little bit more familiar with them now that PRT has
Acquired them um I worked in R&D with warehouser and uh I now work for PRT and IFCO jump to our next slide we’ll talk about Southern Pine species a little bit um grafted seed Orchards and their designs CMP practices and that’s going to include CMP bag types uh pollen
Handling CMP equipment and then kind of some differences with op and CMP product classes so in the Southeast we deal with main with four main Pine species um the most important one is is Lali Pine that’s our cash cow over a billion uh seedlings are planted a year with L um
Although we do still work with short Leaf slash and uh and long leaf so our Orchards much like y’alls are are uh are all grafted seed Orchards once genetic selections have been tested and identified as being uh ideal forward selections we’ll graft them into our seed Orchards so each of these uh each
Each one of these ramets are genetically the same they’re clones some cones are desirable because of their genetic attributes and what they can pass along but also some we identify as important for CMP and that’s because they produce maybe large amounts of pollen or also are prolific flowers um these orchards are very
Intensively managed um I only have 20 minutes to talk about CNP I could go into an hour and a half two hours about uh lob seed production and Orchard management but just know that they are very intensely managed as far as designs are concerned we also consider at Orchard
Establishment um how CMP is going to impact our Orchards so from a design standpoint we can maximize our efficiency with things like clonal rows these are done as uh short clonal rows or long clonal rows sometimes they’re two they’re paired clonal rows and the advantage that that gives us is
That it’s just operationally efficient for our our uh workers to come through and pollinate down that line they can work left to the right or they can work their way all the way down one line um so as they’re going through these practices of collecting cones and placing bags they’re very efficient now
From an OP standpoint this is going to maximize our pollen Cloud right so we’re going to be able to get Diversified pollen mating occurring there we’re not so concerned in our CMP blocks because we know that we’re going to be bagging those flowers the ones that aren’t
Bagged we’re removing from the trees and we’re going to be creating our own crosses um so certainly there’s some some new Concepts with Orchard designs that are going to maximize efficiency but we also have a mixture of both within our company so what is control Mass pollinated or control Mass pollinated
People have a lot of different terminologies for this Mass control pollination um um but the idea is the same it’s just control breeding just like what you do in a genetic uh tree Improvement program so we we know who mother is we’re placing controlled bags controlled breeding bags on the mothers
We’re injecting pollen but rather on a research scale we’re doing this operationally so we’re doing hundreds of thousands of bags because of that we’re less concerned about contamination when we’re doing research breeding we’re very concerned about contamination we’re concerned about how pure our pollen is we’re concerned about what what the
Timing is at bag removal with with a CMP process we’re less controlled about concerned about that because we know this is going to be a mass-produced product and generally in agriculture you can look at corn soybeans you see a contamination rate of around 5 to 6% and that’s something that we’re comfortable
With to to work with as well so if we’re contaminating our seed at the end of the day we’re also still doing it with that same m mother tree so we know that the contamination that 5 or 6% is still a function of an open pollinated uh female from that Elite
Selection so we know who mom is we know who dad is we’re breeding them on that operational scale and we have a lot of tools to do that with and one of them is a type of CNP bags that we use some of you guys may be familiar with PBS um
This is a a wonderful company they do a great job across the world with tree breeding plant breeding um bag types and there’s some advantages to them um in comparison there’s also a craft paper bag option loss in bags or I think midco uh owns owns that patent now
And they’re more of a one-time use type of product whereas your white PBS bags you can you can use multiple times there’s a cost difference between the two craft paper bag is pretty cheap can do that for about 15 cents whereas our PBS bags that are are reusable are about
A buck 50 coming out of can coming out of the UK so the advantages with these white bags is that hey look we can get some reduced bag rub we can reduce our flower damage we can get a little bit better retention and they go up quick as
A lot of you guys know working with on Mother Nature’s time clock is it’s challenging so there are times when you’re pushing a lot of work a lot of Crews that are that have been working tireless tirelessly to to achieve the goals that we have set forth to have
Something that’s reusable and that we can put up quickly is ideal whereas our craft paper bags we can we can use them one time but they’re a little bit slower to put up often times they’re reinforced with a aluminum wire and that wire just helps support that Branch tipet so that
There’s not as much bag rub that occurs from equipment standpoint I’m sure many of you guys in this room are familiar with aerial boom lifts um so all this breeding activity that occurs happens 25 meters up in the air uh you guys may be running one two three
Five six lifts we rent over a 100 each year uh and and some of some of our sites run about 25 to 30 at a time um the reason that that’s important is because this is a big Financial component of CMP right here just the investment in this equipment alone is is
Is a lot there’s options that we can go with um different providers and I’m happy to talk about that with anybody who’s interested in going down this Avenue um there’s certainly different equipment and and uh and a different providers that do better Services than others but
Uh overall the aerial boom lifts are key to CMP processes now Orchards that get larger and taller than 85 ft or what am I what is that in meters there about 25 meters they become genetically obsolete for us because in order to get a 120
Foot or uh a a 35 M lift out on our site they’re heavy they’re expensive they get stuck and nothing fun happens when you’re that that high up in the air they’re also a risk from a from a safety standpoint so at that point once our orchards are no longer able to be
Reached with an 85 or 25 meter lift we we rug them out we’re done with them we cut them to the ground and start over and our lifts get suck in the Southeast it’s it’s wet conditions most of our orchards are in Sandy loms or Sandy sites they don’t
Necessarily hold a lot of moisture but we do have low pitfalls we do have old stump holes and and it can be tough now there are some advantages in some options out there like this this uh track lift this quad track lift um more expensive but if you’re working in an
Environment or an orchard that you know is problematic it’s advantageous to go ahead and just invest in this equipment up front we work in such a small time window that when a lift is stuck or a lift is broken or it’s down it we can’t stop mother nature she’s still moving so
It’s up to us to to manage for this and some of some of the tools and options that we have is to go ahead and invest up front in a in a quad track LIF but getting stuck isn’t the only challenge that we deal with in the
Southeast and this is in an orchard in in Louisiana where they happen to have this 12T alligator come walking through the orchard while they were doing CMP so you can see some of the bags up top um so yeah we we’ve got quite a few quite a few
Challenges so from a pollen handling standpoint um we’re injecting pollen into our bags we know who mom is we know who dad is we’re making this controlled cross that we that we know its performance we’re injecting about a cc per application and when we do this we’re evaluating that flow
The the flowers U susceptibility to being pollinated so we do it about two or three times just to ensure that all the flowers inside of that bag become pollinated because there is variability some years are are tougher than others as well some years we have a lot of variability across uh flower development
Stages um so bags are marked you can see that you can see that on the on that last slide we spray paint a Little X on there and come back and spray paint it another color again once that’s done and that way we can we can keep up with what
Bags have been pollinated and which have it so during the the period that all this is going on we’re putting up bags we’re collecting pollen we’re applying pollen uh there’s a lot of moving parts that are going on um so one of the activities that’s important is ensuring
That we get pollen for the next year so we’re using a year old pollen we’d love to use fresh pollen if that was an option I’d do it every single time because you get better retention seed set and and Seed yield but it’s just not operationally logistically feasible so
What we’ll do is we’ll start to collect pollen for that next year and we’ll make plans as far as what those those uh pollen needs are and catkins are collected they’re clipped off of the branches we’re working with a with with pine and so we’re able to remove those
Catkins from the trees and then they’re shaken they’re dried down and shaken um into a fine powder they dried down in these giant these giant rooms um are pollen drying rooms and a real fancy terminology there but we’re shooting for for low relative humidity and
95° um and you can see that’s that’s uh Doug sharp there um Doug is the uh he was the COO of uh uh IFCO and now he’s taking on a vice uh vice president VP role within PRT we can jump to the next so so pollen storage once they’re dried down and
They’re shaken down into that fine powder we store them into into liter containers and put them in the freezer our Target is less than 10% moisture content and we go ahead and run an analysis to ensure that anything larger than than 10% that water will freeze shatters crystalline structure and
Destroys and degrades the pollen just like it wouldn’t seed uh we we test all of our pollen this is important if we’re spending the time to get up there if we’re spending spending the time to put these bags up we need to ensure that the pollen that we’re
Applying is of the best Vigor and the best germination possible so what we’ll do is we test every single liter of pollen that comes in excuse me and we’ll look at the width of the pollen grain and then we’ll look at that tube come that pollen tube extending off of it to
Determine its viability we only use pollen that’s 80% germ or better from this sampling method and so that’s that’s uh that’s what we’ll end up using for for CMP right the rest gets tossed away so comparing these two options um I know traditionally doing seed Orchard mixes doing maybe single family
Collections of op is common out here uh maybe it’s mostly just just seed Orchard mixes but some of the advantages that that we have from this open pollinated is you do get that diversity right you do get uh a wider planning zone we get we got the option to go ahead and and
Produce this seed at a pretty relatively cheaper cost anyhow um than than CMP so moving on to CMP what are the advantages In the comparison there and again CMP mCP ECP you’ll hear hear this terminology thrown everywhere it’s all the same concept it’s just mass-produced controlled crosses um some
Of the pros are we get the best genetic gain option out of here we can determine what SCA is we can look at what the specific combining ability is of these particular crosses and then if you want to bulk them up into multiple crosses in order to meet your diversity goals
They’re there to to be able to do that we can now attack disease issues we can now attack things like uh migration in a in a strategic way not just a generalized um what’s what’s flowing in the open pollen Cloud Direction so we know who mom is we know
Who dad is they’re both tested they’re both well known the cons it is less genetically diverse it’s more expensive and they’re very they have more uh varying specific planning zones so that’s General comparison now if we look at the markets in the Southeast you can jump to the next Slide
The annual production of these CMP crosses the trend of that 180 million ceilings were produced last year you guys remember how many seedlings I said were produced a year 1 billion and 18% of them are done as control crosses that’s pretty influential and look at the trend here in about
2012 the production of these control crosses has Skyrocket in the Southeast and and a function of that is the genetic value that they bring to the table not just in growth but in in disease resistance and insect resistance and tree form and stem form our uh that’s all right
Um the annual the annual production of CMP bags over the years this is pretty interesting so every group like ourselves every other company that’s invested in producing these these CNP crosses this is the number of bags that they’ve placed annually so in 2016 about 1.5 million bags last year it was almost 2.
2.8 million bags so think about the effort whenever you’ve done your breeding responsibilities and you put up 150 bags or 200 bags and you say gosh that was a tough year over two million guys over 2 million 2.6 in 2021 how is this done it’s done through a lot of
Strategic planning intensive labor activities the utilization of h2b h2a workers and and a strong solid foundation in planning the process so that’s all I’ve got um again I could go on for an hour and a half on this but if there’s any questions you guys feel free to give me a holler or
Pull me aside happy to fi them two questions two questions thanks thanks for your talk uh really enjoyed that I was wondering do you do any topping to manage that height you just let the trees go straight through and my other quick question is sorry I cannot I can’t
Hear that might have been my fault you didn’t hear can’t hear you uh do you do any topping of the trees to manage the height and do you pollinate every other day when you do your three times yeah so from a pruning standpoint we we do not
Prune the tops of our of our pine trees their apical dominance is too strong in fact you’ll end up doing more damage and get windthrow damage it’s been tested it’s been tried I wish we could keep them shorter uh but they like to grow so we’ll let we’ll let them do their thing
And then your second question was the timing of pollination and so we’re looking for for maximum recept receptivity in that bag and so it depends some days it might be every other days somay it may be every third day it really depends on the timing of that that flower phology and
How that year is going and year to year there’s a lot of differences um the idea though is once we get that third shot if we need that third shot we’re pulling those bags off because at that point that pollen grain has entered that position that it can no longer oh an
Open pollinated pollen grain can’t just come along and impact that that uh that pollination period that it’s already occurred one more question I did say m bar but I didn’t really expect her to listen to me hi are you doing any assisted migration in the sense that using pollen
From I don’t know Southern locations or something like that to compensate climatic change yeah absolutely and I think of course this needs to be tested rigorously before it’s taken to a commercial scale and that’s something that we’ve done in the south is looking at taking wide Zone crosses
To to bring about the benefits of of both of those um th those providences so in the Southeast we have providences that grow very strong but they may have disease susceptibility whereas you may have one that has no disease susceptibility at all very resistant to fusiform rust but maybe its growth
Characteristics aren’t as strong as as another provenance is so what we’ll do is do a wide cross and then go test them across Geographic areas to see how they perform and I think that’s an important thing to take away that especially species like ly Pine and Douglas fur
These are the most genetically diverse species in the world so we have opportunity to make gains and we have opportunities to prepare for diseases and impacts that we may come across I think I heard pitch canker talked about a little bit earlier this today that’s a problem for us in the Southeast a
Significant one and so in order to to combat these uh problems that we’re going to face we have to have the tools and and we need to use the tools that we have at our resources and one of that is controlled breeding and making selections all right thank you
Guys all right hello everyone uh appreciate you letting me take the time to talk to you guys a little bit about what we do at JD Irving limited so I’m the supervisor at Park Andale seed Orchard with JD Irving limited my name is Courtney um so I was born and raised in
Frederickton New Brunswick um I got my Forest technician diploma with the Maritime College of forest technology and then I moved on to the University of New Brunswick to get my Bachelor of Science in forestry um I’ve been with JD Irving for two years now I’ve always been kind of interested in the the
Growing part of of the industry and civil culture for example so I was really honored to be able to join the orchard in the last two years and then just last June took over as supervisor so still on my journey to tree Improvement and hopefully getting to
Where some of you are today with uh with tree Improvement um so JD iring limited um we’re part of the woodlands division we are vertically integrated um we’ve been in business since 1882 and have 16,000 employees so the really nice thing about that is is um being vertically
Integrated is we can work very closely with our Nursery um with our Foresters too that were technically our customers that we’re providing the seed to um so we do have a lot of advantages when it comes to you know following uh the supply chain um especially when it comes
Down to site selection for the seedlings and putting the um best genetic seeds on our sites that we’re managing we manage um some Freehold land as well as some Crown Land in New Brunswick as well so park Andale seed Orchard um we’re located in Elgen New Brunswick we have
About 270 Acres um we have Spruce and pine Orchards we have red Spruce black Spruce white spruce uh Norway spruce White Pine and jackpine so it’s nice to have a variety of species to work with because constantly learning about these different species um and trying to perfect our breeding programs as well um
Our for first Orchards were planted around 19 1880 on site we have our Orchard cone shed and our seed extractory is right on site at Park Andale seed Orchard um we do have a a nursery site that’s located just about 30 35 minutes down the highway but it’s
Really nice to have our seed extractory right on site we’re not transporting the cones too far we collect them store them in our cone shed and then they’re basically ready uh for our own processing as we can get to them throughout the winter so we do a lot of controlled Mass
Pollination um with our with our white spruce especially um some with our other species like Norway spruce too but our main focus is on White Spruce so we’re looking to capture Superior uh Superior genetic um volume gains insect resistance and breeding our desirable clones together so just going to run through
Kind of the steps of how we conduct controlled Mass pollination at JD Irving limited um so first we’re going to monitor the Clone for flowers and pollen buds so we’ll go out we’ll we’ll get one of the aerial lifts um that Stephen was talking about and we’ll check we’ll
Check the trees and we’re looking for which clones are which clones have flowers which clones have pollen um identifying the desirable clones to cross so even though we might have a lower genetic clone that has all kinds of flowers that still might not be our top priority for um breeding that
Particular tree so we’re um kind of going down the list of our clones from Superior genetics to um to lesser and trying to breed at the top of our list with the superior genetics we’re going to track the flower and pollen Bud development so once we decided which
Female clones we’re going to be Crossing with our pollen we’re going to then track them in the flower development once the um buds once the the flowers are ready to be bagged at the beginning of May we’ll go ahead and we’ll bag those with um our crew of Summer hires
We do have um a number of folks on our team that are um full-time year round however we do have to recruit quite a bit of Labor to get that main CMP done in the springtime so we’ll oh sorry um so we’ll track the flower and
Pollen uh or sorry the flower and Bud development then we’ll conduct our pollinations around miday uh we’re finding that year-to year we’re right around that May 20th Mark so we’re also tracking our Growing Degree Days to see when those pollinations should take place um but we’re tracking the flowers
Every single day we’re looking at the stage that they’re at um we’re testing our pollen and making sure that it’s ready especially when those flowers are receptive and good to go um we’ll also conduct one and two pollinations if there was time allowing we might even do
A third however we haven’t gotten there uh this year collect uh so then we’ll collect our pollen we also do clippings as Stephen mentioned um with their group so we’ll go ahead clip the pollen um we’ll put it in our pollen drying room our pollen drying room is quite small
Though uh we’re not quite there yet however um we’ll put our boxes in the pollen drying room ensure that the temperature is consistent relative humidity and we’ll be tracking um the moisture content of it as well before we store it if we are storing it and then
Near the end of May we’re going to remove the bags from the trees once we’re sure that each one of the Clones has closed up this year we noticed that even one if we have two different clones that are side by side one of them might be further developed than the other so
You might have one clone or one cone clone of cones that are fully closed and the other one may not be so it’s really important to check each tree and we also found differences from block to block so we kind of have a white spruce one block
And a white spruce two block and both of those blocks are not going to be at the exact same rate there’s just slightly difference there’s slight differences in the slope slight differences in the nutrients that are available um wind all that stuff so it’s really important to
Track each block each clone and even even between r to ensure that they’re at the stage we want to remove the bags um and then we’ll go ahead and we’ll collect the cones in the fall so this was um some pictures of our flowers that I took this year um right
From when they’re still developing and kind of elongating as buds through to when they start to open up and then to when they close again uh the flowers are that bright red color but the ones that we put the bags over they turn a little bit green that doesn’t seem to impact um
That doesn’t seem to impact the seeds set for example but they just change colors uh a little bit when they’re not exposed to that sunlight throughout that entire month of May um pollen collection so so we do our clippings this is some of the white spruce pollen that we were um clipping
Just this spring here so we’ll put it in our pollen dry room we’re going to test our quality too so um we have we have a lab that’s in um Sussex that’s not far from our from our site there so they’ll help us a lot with our polles make sure
We have the right equipment to do so and then storage we have um we have a couple freezers at the at our site at Park Andale seed Orchard we also have kind of a backup of our pollen as well at at our Sussex site and that’s just to ensure
That you know if anything were to happen that we do have that backup so that’s important to have um and I’m just going to talk about the logistics and kind of how we conducted it uh this year as well so we did have um a number number of lifts on
Site we’re we’re nowhere near 100 uh by any means but it could be 5 to 15 for example depending on um what our crop is looking like and our crew size as well so we’re trying to pollinate with fresh pollen as much as possible not always possible so usually the flowers that you
Want to pollinate the pollen is going to be ready at the same time for collection as the flowers are ready for pollinations so it’s a it’s a bit of a balance collecting that pollen with one team and providing it to the other team so that they can can use it we were
Lucky that we do have a a a decent amount of stored pollen as well so we can start off with our stored pollen and then use fresh pollen as it’s processed and ready to go for our pollinations um we’ll we’ll typically do one and two pollinations we would have
Liked to have tried a third just to see if that impacted our our seed set and um our our yields but we didn’t get a chance to do the third one this year but we were able to do pollinations uh the first and second round so that way we
Can ensure that we’re capturing um the that way we can ensure that we’re capturing the the flowers when they’re ready to receive the pollen so typically we we’ve noticed that it’s over several days maybe like five to six days so if we pollinate on day one and two when
We’re certain that the that the flowers are receptive and they’re ready we’ll wait a day or two and then we’ll go ahead and do the entire Orchard again so that way we’re capturing that entire time frame for pollinations um one thing that we ran into this year was some
Adverse weather so typically when we’ve conducted uh CMP the weather’s been really good in May um might have a little bit of rain but but not too bad this year we had um kind of an extreme Wind and Rain event that occurred right in the middle of our pollinations
Between pollination one and two um the biggest thing there for us is using the bags that we use so we have been using the craft paper bags and so we’ll use various sizes small bags and large bags so what we’re noticing is that with a large bag we can capture a lot more
Flowers on a branch on your Spruce you might have quite a few clusters of flowers so those large bags are able to capture all kinds of flowers the only issue with that is that should there be um a wind storm for example your larger
Bags are going to act like a sale in in those events so so you might lose a couple bags for example we were we were fortunate that we didn’t lose too many but definitely um provided us with some information to next year to maybe move towards more mediumsized bags
Double-checking zip tie uh strength on the branches and little little improvements like that that we can make to ensure that it’s not as much of an issue um we get a lot of questions about the the rain well how does the rain impact the bags um typically they’ll
Just dry out again and you’re good to go so your bags will dry out uh with the flowers inside and you can still pollinate um when the time is ready so there’s a number of those improvements that will be uh using going into 2024 some other examples of some improvements
That we’ve made are some tally sheet so we’re getting our crew to track how many bags that they’re putting on tree so we can find some parameters like how many seeds per tree are we getting how many seeds per cone seeds per bag and some interesting parameters like that that
Will help us move forward with our program um so cone and Seed extraction so once our cones are collected um in the fall they’re placed in these trays that we store in our cone shed so we’ll put about four hect lers in uh per tray so they’re collected they’re stored in
Our con shed everything’s processed on our site we typically have one to three people that are helping operate our um our seed extractory depending on the crop size that year so uh we’re very fortunate having our seed processing right on site and depending on what our
Crop size is we could be in there for a month could be up to three months so so we’re really trying to ensure that we have enough staff that can keep that flow moving throughout the winter and um yeah and this was just some of the cones that we had collected
This past uh this past fall fall uh this is our extractory itself so our stages um into our Kiln which is our top photo there uh and to our tumbler scalper de wiing liquid Sizer and gravity um we’ve been visiting a number of uh seed extractores across Canada I
Would say Quebec BC and we’ve noticed that a lot of the equipment is pretty well the same equipment depending on size few minor differences so seed care so I know we had the January Workshop working on you know uh germination improvements so we’ve been really focused on that our ourselves so
We want to ensure that every seed gets to reach its full full germination potential we have an an initiative to improve Orchard practices as well as handling and Care practices to increase our germination capacity so some of our considerations um the you’ll notice the seed on the screen there that’s actually Norway
Spruce seed not white spruce seeds just want to clarify that I’m aware of that um extractory processing steps so there’s a lot of things that we can do within our processing collection and timing to ensure that we can have um the the most viable seed possible so the
Processing stages if there’s a stage that we can eliminate so that there’s less impact on the seed that we’ll do that so there was one thing that we noticed in Quebec is that they moved away from their liid liquid separation step and that’s something that we like
To do going forward for the fragile seeds um temporary storage so previously seed had been stored and left in our extractory in between stages so one thing that we built this year was kind of a cold room so it’s just a room that’s kept above above zero but um
Probably like two to four degrees to ensure that the seed is cool in between stages and that way we’re not heating the seed up and impacting um that biological activity within it container types is another thing that we’ve been talking a lot about lately so we have plastic containers that were’re stored
In however the there’s a lot of space like as we’re using the seed you might have a little bit of air space within those containers increasing potential for moisture um we want to make sure our seeds are between 4 and 8% for storage so we have a really considering changing
Our container types to potentially bags where we can decrease the amount of moisture within the bags ensuring that our seeds are viable for as long as possible um just general handling practices when we’re transporting seed we’ll ensure that the seed stays in a cooler with ice when we’re taking it to
The nursery even if we’re just collecting samples from our seed freezer and bringing it into um our facility to be tested we want to make sure that we’re keeping it in lunch bags with with ice packs and anything that we can do to ensure that the seed is going to stay um
As viable as possible so germination Improvement considerations um the environment setting so we had previously used a 24-hour light cycle we’re going to uh move away from that in incorporating dark Cycles to mimic the natural environment a little a little more temperature we’ve doing been doing some experiments with temperature and 23
Degrees seems to be uh The Sweet Spot uh for our species and the relative humidity as well we’re really fortunate that we purchased a new conviron this year which can really help us dial in the environment for our germination chemical assistance as well um you know we’ll we’ll treat our seed
Before they’re germ tested with um peroxide for example we want to make sure that there’s not going to be any mold that’s growing on that seed in the germination cabinet um there’s some other literature out there that that we’ve that we noticed that we might want
To try for example soaking the seeds in a chemical uh GA that we had talked about previously in some other presentations so that’s something that we’re looking into um haven’t had any final results on it yet but definitely anything that we can do to improve uh to improve that that seed so we’re
Not wasting seed and um that every seed can germinate to its full potential we want to min minimize the agitation process too so even when we’re getting our sample seed we want to make sure that they’re not being squish into a lunch bag with with all kinds of them
And that’s impacting the seed coat because any little Nicks on the seed coat or anything like that could impact that seed um longer term improvements so some equipment considerations for us we want to make sure that our seed is as pure as possible when we’re sending it to our
Nursery so um considering a gra a gravity table I know some of your sites have those and that way we’ll be able to separate out uh smaller size seed medium siiz seed and large size seed relatively rapid a spare extractory motor just little things like that so we can ensure
That if there’s any equipment that’s down during our processing we’ll have some we’ll have a spare motor that we can put right in there that there’s no downtime and that the seeds aren’t sitting long or that the cones aren’t sitting longer than they should be for
Processing as well um as well as a microscope we have microscopes but not specifically at the orchard that exactly meet our needs for checking pollen um and and all those types of things so there’s definitely some improvements that we can make with our equipment and the overall Orchard itself nutrient
Regime ensuring that we’re fertilizing and checking the nutrients of each block because each block is going to have different needs especially based on slow position um and uh it’s slow position as well as sunlight irrigation regime so any of our small blocks are going to have irrigation lines in them so our
Smallest trees we want to ensure that they have the the most care possible as the trees get older we’ll remove irrigation lines but we want to try some trials with um Irrigation in those larger trees as well and see if that can improve um embryo development within our seeds and other seed
Factors compaction as well we have quite a number of aerial lifts that we’ll bring into our Orchard as we’re uh conducting our CMP program we want to make sure that we’re going through the orchard with as minimal passes as possible every pass with the lifts creates more compaction and we notice
That if we were to leave one of the the lifts in the block overnight you can see that it will settle just slightly into the ground so we want to make sure at the end of the day all the lifts are getting pulled out of the blocks and
Your heavier lifts like your 80ft boom lifts are going to be that much heavier than the 60ft boom lifts so if we can reach the tops with our 60s we’re not going to go ahead and get any 80ft lifts especially for um budget budget wise as well um also for uh competition within
The orchard any weeds and stuff that you have are going to compete for those nutrients are going to compete for water so we we make sure that we we mow our Orchard that we’re not having all that competition especially with our new blocks that we’re establishing and integrated test
Management uh we want to make sure that we have as minimal Co cone and Seed insects as possible whether that means picking last year’s cones to ensure that it’s not a Haven for cone and Seed insects to um anything else that we can do to reduce pest so if we’re roguing an
Orchard and we’re cutting out all of our lower genetic trees we want to make sure that all the materials pulled off site if we can cut the stumps down we will and it’s just less um it’s less of a habitat for any of those pests to live in our Orchard
Thank you any any [Applause] questions okay thank you I’m sorry again we’re going to have to move on with the program we have three more speakers before lunch so without further Ado I’m going to introduce my colleague Victoria Lee She’s our testing supervisor at the BC tree seed
Center I think just the name of time and for lunch I think uh I’m going to take full responsibility for packing the schedule a little too tight um so I’ll make sure that Dave and Victoria have as much time and Martin is actually presenting on some of the work I was
Going to talk a little bit about tomorrow so if you want to visit his talk on butternuts and if if anybody wants to raise their hands who wants to hear about exceptional weird rare hardwood species I can get I have all your emails so I can uh we can do a
Webinar at something at another point so I will do that so we all have enough time for lch a little short take this stuff down I don’t have to do anything with it it’s on hello working hello hello can you hear me testing testing one
123 I was asked to think of a Snappy title um I’m Victoria Lei I’m the testing supervisor at the tree seat Center um that’s in Sur BC and I’m just here to talk about basically what do we do in the seat testing laboratory uh hands up who’s actually toured the tree seed center
Fair number of you so this might seem a little repetitive oh oh this is can it go back yeah I see okay so our main functions are testing for seot registration retest quality assurance trials as well as client requests just some history the tree seed Center was first established in Duncan
On Vancouver Island in the 1950s um the government at that time recognized a need to ensure a continuous supply of good tree seed so that’s a and in 1986 the tree seed Center a new facility was built in Sur BC and seven staff from Duncan actually move to Siri
To work there and today we have about 13 regular full-time staff and maybe five auxiliary staff during the processing season depending on on the cone crop of the Year this is just a staff photo from a few weeks ago and the this is the seat Testing Lab
Um that’s Laura boen benx Holman neither of whom wanted to show their faces because they’re shy Yep this is our germinator room we have seven germinators um as uh Courtney mentioned they can be set to different temperature and light regimes and we also have a lab cooler the door in the
Back that’s where we do all our cold stratification for our tests um so if you’re I know some people are from from other countries if you’re not familiar the BC Tre seat Center is often referred to as the crown jewel of BC’s reforestation program basically cone crops are collected and then
Shipped to the tree seat Center where they’re uh processed extracted to form seed Lots the seed Lots get tested by us in the seed testing lab and then they get stored in thega 18 freezer and whenever someone makes a Seedling request the seed gets withdrawn prepared
Then shipped out to the nurseries to be grown okay oh sorry why does it keep going forward okay um so okay we follow the chief Forester standards for seed use which basically says we must test um the seed Purity the weight of the Seas the moisture content and germination capacity and I’ll go
Into this a bit later um these standards that they stipulate okay um we follow International seat testing Association rules which provide standardized procedures for sampling germination test regimes tolerance tables and many other details we’re not actually certified um but we do refer a lot to them and we
Also refer to aosa that’s Association official seed analyst rules as well we have some in-house improvements we feel that we do better for some deeply dormant species for example we’ll do longer stratification on that and the pie chart is just a breakdown of our testing activities most
Of our time is spent doing what we call Standard tests so those are the tests that actually need um that you actually need for seed lot registration so um that’s moisture content Purity seeds per gram and germination those results get uploaded to spar so this is a screenshot um from Spar and the
Germination and the C for gram value or what allow you to calculate how many grams of seed you actually need um if you know how many seedlings you want and at the bottom there are just germination retests so um once sea lots are stored in long-term storage we actually do go
Back and retest the germination um regularly just to make sure that that’s up to date and we’ve had some seots from like the 80s which are still doing really well this is just to show that most of our activities are centered around preparing and Performing germination
Testing um mainly it’s mainly a lot more because of all those retests so how do you go about um testing seed first you need to sample so the keywords are random and repres repres representative your result will only ever be as good as your sample typically that means we do one to three
Samples per container depending on the number of containers um to make a composite sample that gets Blended really well and then we take our testing sample from that so the first test we do is moisture content so you take two replicates of five grams each for most species um it’s
A bit less for really light really small seed CES um the replicates are dried back in the oven for 103° C overnight and in the morning we’ll check the moisture content um so the legislation stipulates that they must be between 4 to 99.9% um in moisture content for testing
To proceed realistically if it’s over 8% we will dry it back just to make sure it’s safe for long-term freezer storage and we’ve also started doing water activity so the oven moisture content test is a destructive test because you’re drying back the seed in the oven but water activity is non-destructive
You’re basically using the principle of equilibrium relative humidity um to estimate moisture content and this is really helpful when you have really small seed Lots or genetic conservation samples where you really do not want to destroy any seed at all and we’ve been trying to um do this on
Every single seaw so we get more data points and we’ll relate that to moisture content so we can create our own curves for each species so if moisture content is good you can move on to Purity technicians will manually separate the seed from any debris debris can include cones scales
Needles pitch anything that they weren’t able to remove in processing um if it is below 97% then we will send it back to Conan SE processing um ask them can you rerun this can you get more debris out um and usually all of our seed LTS are above
99% which they are very proud of if those if Purity passes then you can move on to seats for gram um eight replicates of 100 seeds are weighed and the average weight is used to calculate the seeds per gram and that’s what you use to um determine the number of grams
You need for your potential seedlings so seeds per gram can vary greatly between different species for white bark Pine um It’s a larger seed you might only have six to 10 seeds per gram but if you have really small uh seeds like trembling Aspen you know if you blow it it’ll
Scatter um you can have up to like 10,000 seeds per gram so a large difference there we also do an x-ray on each seed lot to capture the initial seed quality um you can easily tell if seeds are deteriorated or empty in which case you could send it back to processing be like
Hey guys there’s a lot of empty seed can you try redoing this um often times it’ll just be the embryo that’s empty and they can’t really separate that because there’s still the mega gamify which makes the weight really difficult to differentiate between seeds um which actually still have embryos um you can
Also check for insect damage so sometimes we’ll see Mega stigma larvae inside still um you can look at embryo development is it short is it long in filling the cavity which we want as well as Mega gamify shrinkage so sometimes if nurseries don’t use up all of their seed
They’ll return the seed to be re-registered and because it’s been stratified and dried back and who knows what has happened at the nursery how did they store it um you’ll see some shrinkage in the mega Gita fight and for white bark Pine which is an endangered species we’ll actually use the X-ray to
Estimate the germination because we can’t afford to destroy any seed so technicians will each get a copy of the X-ray and we go through it with our highlighters marking the the good seed and the Bad Seed and we have a meeting um and debate and that’s how we determine our German
Estimate okay so germination testing so we have four um 100 C replicates which are soaked so for most species we’ll use our vials to do standing water soak overnight um for seed Lots which with deeper dormy they tend to have more fungal issues will actually do a running
Water soak so those are are soak tanks um ranging from 48 hours to two weeks and then after they’re soaked they’re spread into germination dishes or put into bags or spread into AA dishes depending on the species and this is just to show you different test types for different species have different soak
Durations um different cold Strat durations um different temperature regime so this is all based off of ISTA with some of our improvements and then after cold stratification the tests are moved into germinators which are um set at different temperature regimes and technicians will actually go into the each germ dish every Monday
Wednesday Friday looking at the germinant um they’ll pick out and record normal germinants um which are four times the length of the seed or two times for ab species and we’ll also note down if anything looks abnormal so that’s just a germ record and we’ll note down the abnormals like Is It
Reversed the calans come out first is it stunted like did the radical never grow did it rot before getting long enough to be cult normal and if the four replicates are very different from each other it’s out of Tolerance um I won’t go into a of Tolerance details but there are lots of
Tables and isas that determine um what out of Tolerance and it’s built into our in-house program which we call Concept um if it’s out of Tolerance we’ll actually repeat the test so some of you may have gotten my emails apologizing saying sorry this test is AIT of Tolerance you’ll have to wait
Another six seven weeks because we’re going to redo the test um if the test result is also unexpectedly low if it’s a retest you know compared to the previous test or I guess if it were very high like way too high then we would retest the sea lot just to make sure the
Result is as it should be yeah oops come on okay and some seed Lots depending on a species are actually sent to the plant Health laboratory in abbottsford um for fungal testing so they’ll actually put the seeds on media and then see what grows and um so they test mainly for
Fusarium or cisa if the caot was collected via squirrel cache or for seroc caucus for uh Spruce seed lots and if it comes back as high fungal so a High um fungal load will actually flag it in the freezers and whenever they’re withdrawn they’ll actually get soaked
Separately so not with other sea Lots just to make sure there’s no contamination so that was all our standard testing we also do a lot of quality assurance testing so for the processing side we’ll do cone or seed moisture content testing it’s basically just to see where is it
At you know if cones have come in they’re super wet um or maybe just a little wet and they want to know is it dry enough to proceed with um processing they’ll give it to us we’ll put it in the oven overnight same procedure weigh it and then give them the moisture
Content um if there’s also gravity table separations in processing so if they separate it into light mid and Heavies and they’re not sure if they should keep all the portions they might get us to test it and if it’s good maybe they’ll recombine all the portions and for seedling requests we’ll
Also do germination testing so for about 200 to 250 requests per year will take a sample at shipping and actually start a a germination test this is just to see how did the seed actually do operationally because for our lab testing it’s quite a bit different you
Know it’s small sample size small vial but in seedling request you might have like two kilos of seed being soaked at a time um we’ll actually also ask the nurseries hey how did you do can you give us your results so we can compare our lab germ our QA germ and the nursery
Germ just to see how the sea lots are actually doing in real life um sething requests of Western red cedar red Alder and paper birch are very staticky um they’re pelletized for easier handling when sewing so that’s all these little white pebbl like things in our um vitamin dish we’ll put 25 so
That’s yeah 25 cells and have eight of those reps and actually put water in them just to see do they break down quickly um do they actually contain contain a seed do they contain more than one seed which is not what we want or do they contain any
Debris I mentioned return seed before and this is just a few examples of the trials we also do so um at our own um initiative or client requests we might test different stratification regimes so like for Spruce we’ve been doing 3we our default versus six week cult stratification um we’ve also done
Sanitation treatments such as peroxide trials on our Western Larch and x-rays so I think Dave might go more into these trials later so I’ll just leave it at that for this um that’s just an example of the white bark Pine so we actually x-rayed individual seeds to see what
They look like and then we sep or we kept them separate in germ dishes just to see if they would germinate and some results were pretty surprising um like seeds which looked like they shouldn’t germinated shouldn’t germinate germinated sees that looked like they should have germinated didn’t germinate so
Yeah um this is just if you have any seed testing needs you can always contact me and we do do testing for a fee if it’s not standard registration yeah this is just more resources um so there’s our Tre seat Center website as well as the seed
Handling guide book which has a lot of good information okay and that’s it for [Applause] me this pardon me just GNA go I’m just gonna go I have one oh that I do need all right Victoria said I’m going to talk about some results and that’s
Not true if you want to get an update on any of those results you have to subscribe to the tree seed working group News Bulletin and you’ll see those in the next Edition all right what I will talk about sort of following on the testing theme uh seed research interpretation and and
Pitfalls I think that has something to do with my my topic um um and I’m just going to jump right in um so I was at a meeting and I was asked to talk about bridging seed science and application how do we make sure that our research
Gets put into practice and you know following that I really felt you know there is a third uh key to this there is a third end and that’s really the policy regulations legislative goals and really I don’t have it in a slide but maybe the most important to the research Community
Is the funding agencies and that sort of gets all lumped behind here so so you know what are some of our goals and really I’m going to really um recognize the importance of basic science and we need some of that basic science but my focus is really how does science um more
Closely flow into operations so what do we want to do with seed science we want to understand explain describe predict we want to seek the truth and everybody’s truth might be very different so how do you go through the literature and determine what’s useful to your facility and your operations and
What isn’t um science is also supposed to help solve practical problems um in application we’re meant to deliver a product like seedlings or we want to maximize germination of a seed lot we want to minimize or reduce costs a lot of the applications are in some sort of
Business um so increasing efficiency I see that very similar to solving problems and one of the real overlap areas um and really we want this sustained and consistent supply of seed in terms of the policy um regulations funding agencies you know setting of goals boundaries legal framework uh you know some clear
Userfriendly guidance this is all important it’s sort of flows into this Politics as well that we sometimes see which I’m not going to talk about at all but I think these cogs are all very important to recognize in terms of the system that we work um we all know about the scientific
Method and what one of my main points I’m not going to go through the the the slides on the method we know we all come up with questions um if we’re good at observations we come up with good questions and those turns into H hypothesis and go through experimentation
But this is really this Center slide that I want to talk about everybody thinks if you publish something in literature that’s the answer and I really think we need to go beyond that and in terms of hierarchy of evidence I really love that terminology in terms of you know there’s some promising expert
Opinion up to something that’s very well supported where we have a systematic review of a topic and I think it’s important that we continue to to look at uh testing with evidence that way and how do we seek our truth um one of my favorite graphs in terms of I think what
Many of us should be searching for this is just a graph of looking at corporate Impact versus scientific impact and you know the the article is reach for the Eagles we want science to you know be high in both those areas but there really is room for dogs there’s room for
Sheep we want to eliminate all the dogs that have low corporate impact that have low scientific impact um this is a diagram I’ve used a few times I I kind of love it um a lot of the academics don’t love it um so it begins with this Gardener hype cycle and
It starts with some sort of tech technology trigger here and you know basically we have this inflated expectations and that’s really what research funding and granting is based on on these inflated expect expectations unfortunately those aren’t realized or realized in the time scales that that
That that people want and so we get this trough of disillusionment and that’s where Operational Support vanishes um you know these things didn’t come out of nowhere there is some basis behind them so there is this slope of Enlightenment and there’s some sort of plateau of productivity here and I think
This is a really realistic cycle and you know we shouldn’t believe this and maybe we shouldn’t believe this and how do we come to this sort of plateau of productivity a lot sooner um one of the things I find with some of the technology advancements is that we’re looking for problems for the
Latest tools versus selecting the appropriate to for the problem and sometimes it’s that low Tech Tool that is the appropriate tool for the problem that you’re dealing with um I don’t I know you can’t read that cartoon um and I can’t even read it but what it’s sort of
Funny what what Wilson is is working on is um a way to make genetically modified organisms organic um I’d like to review this sort of scientific review system I think everybody’s familiar with this publish or perish in academics um sometimes it’s also so you know it’s worthless unless
It’s published so what do journals do they disseminate information the register authors precedence create key quality assurance through peer viiew and create an information archive it’s incredible you know what would we do without that it’s really really valuable but not all journals are the same they have this thing called an
Impact factor and this creates some sort of scientific currency um and so Publishers somehow become the gate keepers of scientific Prestige uh does it encourage the needed research or the new and spectacular in these journals and really the question who is running the knowledge Bank who is really determining what funding is out
There and for what um it’s also big business 2017 25.2 billion in the scientific publishing industry in 2010 elier had a higher profit margin than Apple Google or Amazon and if people are interested you know these presentations will be made available this is a really interesting Guardian article titled profitable business scientific
Publishing bad for science I I think that’s you know just made to uh be extreme in the title but it’s a very interesting read I suggest you do it um so what is the current system scientists perform research they give articles to Publishers who guess
Science to do do the QA the peer review and sell and sell it back to the libraries for scientists to use certainly we have these Open Access journals but the costs are moving from the libraries back to the scientists who have to pay to get their research
Published um this is sort of what I wanted to talk about as I’ve been involved in tree seed science for a long time I see some of the pitfalls stuff you don’t usually get from reading the abstract and I fear a lot of us are very
Busy we often just read the abstract so you know what’s important you know the first thing is representative sample when an article talks about SI of spruce I don’t expect it to be based on a Single Seed lot we know that our organisms our tree are the most heterogeneous organisms on the planet
Stephen mentioned that I was very happy that you mention that um and really it often seems that whatever treatment we’re applying gets way more consideration than the species um I freak out when I see one seed lot in a paper um and it’s not as uncommon as you
Might think people come to us for seed samples to research Lots you know dozens a year and they’re wanting one seed lot and try to convince them you really should look at a little more than that you should look at a little more than that and it’s all often the promise that
They’re going to expand their sampling after publishing but that really happens so you know there’s really very little in terms of validation uh incentives there’s a lot of incentives to get something new and exciting out um but is it real is it the truth um a smaller example germination
Testing we we talked about istar for replicates of 100 seeds maybe that isn’t even enough with our high highly variable crops you know that’s all based on on corn research um but it’s not uncommon to see papers of 4X 50 or 4X 25 and obviously you know you’re just decreases your Precision of
Anything you’re estimating uh lack of an adequate control is something I I found quite interesting and you know the do nothing is not really realistic because nobody’s doing nothing if you’re not stratifying your con for seed I’ll just come back to that example because it’s common and you
Apply electricity to it and you get a little bit of germination that’s not going to be convince me that I should be using electrical methods you really should be comparing it to your standard which is stratification and so there’s there’s just so much of that in the literature
In terms of things that have overstated the benefits of seed treatments because yes they’ve comp compared it to a control no treatment but not a current treatment that is very cheap and easy to perform um inter interpretation and and this is science versus practice and you
Know when I entered this has sort of been a bit lost you know when we’re looking at the benefit of a practice on operations is best to just test that seed lot well when we’re really looking at scientific principles you want to base that on filled seeds only uh you
Know you can correct for viable seeds but often times you’re going to reduce your sample size and create very unequal replicates um historically scientists have gone to a lot of work to make sure they’re dealing solely with filled seeds in their experiments and it is quite labor intensive um statistical interpretation
Interactions this comes up quite a bit uh you know main factors are often and the more complex for an example a factorial experiment you become the the more you’re guaranteed that you’re going to have interactions and you really shouldn’t be drawing any main conclusions on those main effects so
What do you do you separate by treatments or factors and that’s Limited in terms of how you can interpret it um you can do tests with specific contracts that’s probably the most appropriate statistical method or you can treat them all as random variables and look at percent of the variance and really
Determine what are your most important factors um sixth treatment feasibility um and really probably my last Point here is UND really understanding the problem not what you want to do to solve the problem uh up front you know can treatments be bulked up to an operational scale um sometimes
We find things that are just too cumbersome or costly and this really has to be thought up upfront um and I think it’s really critical to involve operations early um This research and development you can’t read that an ongoing effort to develop or improve products and services often undertaken
By teams of Highly skilled scientists and engineers and what’s missing you know there’s no mention of operations being involved who will actually be using those results uh statistical significance you know we’re all ingrained with alpha05 uh you know it’s it’s the standard you know give me something that
Makes a big difference at 85% confidence and I’ll take it and run with it and I’ll I’ll absorb that risk there is always some risk involved and you know you’ve got to balance what your benefits and risks are and sometimes I think we just get caught up in this very rigid statistical
Interpretation and and I’m a big proponent of you know the way we look at things which is continuous Improvement but for verus continually this is the answer and we’re done and there’s no more to say about this um so really we’re just stepping stones and the people before me what they did correct
Is what I’m you know just following um science is going to change over time what I say today may be proven wrong tomorrow U hopefully I’m giving some stepping stones that are are moving things forward in the right directions um the thing I’ve highlighted this is what I often face with we you
Need some policies and you use the best information to put those policies in place uh people don’t recognize that time goes by and it turns into uh Mantra or myth not understanding there wasn’t great information to go and you really I think have to go back and question some of the assumptions that
You’re doing and that’s always a healthy thing to question your assumptions um this little icon here I just saw a program in the United States scientists engaging and educating decision makers I thought there should be another program operations engaging and education educating scientists um few little um Daniel lock
I sort of like these continuous Improvement principles in terms of stop fixing and start improving you know it’s no good just to correct the problem let’s try to improve it um this was obviously written by a manager here but really anybody can have that idea to initiate a
Change best practices are possibly the ones you already have um you know how do you reward Innovation within your organization borrowing or buying something from abroad who isn’t familiar with your specific context it’s really going to put you behind you know there are times to look outwards but really a
Lot of your answers that are your situation specific are already there changing behavior is often more important than changing processes and it isn’t always easy you know change management is a contact sport people will just generally be resistant to it um if you aren’t failing you aren’t
Trying and you know you have to try things to learn uh and I’m talking about small scale experimentation that can pay off in big ways some experiments will fail make sure you don’t fail the same way again and you know something I’m faced with I’m very fortunate that part of my
Role is still within the realm of extension we used to have a very large extension group I was fortunate to be at an operation facility that survived and I continued to uh be able to engage in extension uh but I really see this divide science is going deeper and
Deeper with new technologies to unravel the truth and the gaps between science and application is widening and I really look at this as a Grand Canyon so you know when did technology transfer die you know we really need it more than ever um you know I I we try our best at
The tree seed working group certainly Kudos up to uh the USDA and their their ringer reforestation nurseries and genetic Resources Group for putting out a lot of great material as well and one last slide just things that are top of my mind please participate tree seed working group whatever organization you
Can be involved with whether it’s Nursery seed um related and I think this whole issue of encouraging support and fund technical extension is really going to pay dividends we need to get that great science into practical applications and ensure operations are involved in prioritizing and designing research make sure scientists understand
The real problem and want to work on it um and scientists policy makers and practitioners all have to play a role in educating and being educated you all have to talk and you all have to listen and question your long held assumptions you know what are they based on that’s it thank [Applause]
You um so uh no I’m good I’m I’m still I think I’m just gonna leave time so there’s one announcement from Raju so anyone who’s uh joining the popler and Willow Council the AGM starts at 1:00 p.m. in the Thompson room and then there’s a Armstrong Municipal Wastewater Plantation there’s a bus or
Some some what some fleet vehicles okay so there’s fleet vehicles leaving for that plantation tour um to meet in the lobby at 3:40 p.m. if you’d like to do that um so we’ve got about 5 to 10 minutes before lunch so I just because we had to
Kind of speed through this morning and thank you again to all the speakers there are gifts for you all um who came to visit and for everyone as well there’s also posters the Tre seed poster um so anyone that wants to take one at any point in the day please do and
There’s more we can roll up um so I just want to give some time for breathing and thoughts and questions so does anybody have any questions for any of the speakers this morning that you were waiting on actually both Sten and Courtney had questions about actually we do need it for
Recording okay for recording uh you mentioned compaction as a potential issue and I’m just wondering if you do any uh measurements or any followup on that as I mean those big lifts or thousands of pounds uh in the Orchards and what impact those might have certainly so for compaction for us like
We uh actively try to minimize the amount of passes that we make throughout the orchard um we have been noticing a little bit of compaction in our larger Orchards uh with our larger trees however we haven’t um gone through and actually tested that but we have looked
Into some potential um things that we could do to mitigate that such as air rating um so we’re looking into um just renting an Air Raider so it’s like has spikes that will go through the ground to kind of break up some of that soil so
That’s something we can do and the the more passes that we get in those Orchards the more CMP that we do the more that we’re noticing the need for that so it hasn’t been a major issue yet but in the future it could be so we want
To be proactive in preventing any of those okay um yeah so compaction is a major issue for us now you guys are blessed in the region that you are in because you have naturally the number one thing that counteracts compaction which is freeze your ground freeze um so
What we do in response to that in the Southeast is we can rip we can run a a 12-in shank down the rows of our Orchards we do that when the soil’s very dry and try to get a shattering effect um outside of that we don’t have a lot
Of tools now we’re operating a lot of equipment a lot of machinery and there are companies that are looking more in depth into that in fact there’s some research being done at NC State um with a tensiometer and looking at soil density and competion so in short we can do a better
Job and I think considering the rows that you’re using like Courtney’s saying is is very important um and then there’s other there’s other options like considering your soil texture we used to we used to operate a lot on lomy sand SS now we’re shifting to kind of Sandy
Loms I’m sorry opposite of that uh but uh just trying to find soils textures that don’t compact as much thank you uh question to Dave could you elaborate a little bit more about this issue of the need of extension because we as I work in a state university in Mexico as researcher and
We are rated based as you insinuated based on how many papers do you publish and what is the impact factor and as higher is the impact factor more sophisticated need to be the paper and that make harder to uh digest that for practitioners so in Mexico we have journals that are in
Spanish that the practitioners read but the impact factor is very small so if you publish there you are a second rated researcher so there is a incentive to do not do extension as researchers so how do you solve that or how do you suggest to solve that
Well I think we need people dedicated to extension so I we need people like you to continue all that same research we need the people who are already applied but we need people in between and you know from what I hear you know those people have vanished from almost all
Jurisdictions and you know I guess my main theme is we need those people again and we need them more than ever because science is that much more distant from practical application um so I think we need dedicated people to extension so I’m not asking you to do more work
Just a quick comment on your uh last talk it’s a lot along line My Philosophy and it was need about six or eight months ago uh some special editors of a journal contacted me and he said we want to write a special issue on genomics and like tree Improvement separating hype
From reality so there’s a series of papers coming out and whatever like that too and it’s interesting to read some of those even by people who are molecular involved you know there was one by an author from North Carolina state where he essentially says there’s a golf a
Golf between the researcher and the applied and and whatever like that too and really need to bring that closer together if we’re going to get practical or like when I’m doing work over in Hawaii with COA I talked to some people many years ago and I said we’ll solve
Your problem I won’t be able to tell you how many genes there are I won’t be able to tell you the under liking mechanism but if I waited till I had all those answers you wouldn’t be planting the species and and they are so Patrick well as a as a career scientist
I just wanted to point out one of the amazing advantages that this community has so you know I work on a lot of stuff I work on pads most recently I spent five years working on them who cares about pads worked on NM gko all sorts of species that are completely unimportant
For me to work on those species and get a reputable paper out of it I have to have replication and that’s really hard things that you see in botanical gardens are almost useless to science because you can’t do replicates so what do you guys have you’ve got unbelievable
Replication you have genomic depth you have all of this stuff that makes it supremely attractive for scientists especially evolutionary scientists so there’s a a crap ton of opportunity in this community which is deep has huge experience and you know has a shelf life unlike working on psyches where you’re
Doing it maybe for two or 3 hundred years from now for one person to read that paper but in this stuff it’s almost immediate you get feedback it’s an interesting area to work in as a scientist so when Dave says yeah extension is needed that’s true because
Extension is the bridge that takes you right into science um scientists have a lot of failure you don’t see that you don’t see my black lab books of you know unrepeatable experiments or unrepeatable ideas but they’re not even possible without your community so I’m just saying it’s a a bigger opportunity and
Should be seized certainly by managers in government are there any government managers here any more Robert I I just have a comment it’s about extension I feel like we have to do our own extension like go to Cisco keep our eyes open for hey I could use
Something like that in the orchard or at the abcfp conference like keep our eyes open for stuff people are doing in for us research and how we can apply it in our Orchards like like that thing I presented but and stuff like that we got to to do it
Ourselves hello um you know we had a this is probably 20 25 years ago we had a fellow here and he really talked about extension in terms of three things um uh education extension and communication and they’re different communication is what you do with the public um education is what you do with
People who are newly entering a field and the extension is what you do with the people who are you know already in the field want to extend their knowledge and we have to look at all three of those prongs I think because we want our messages what we’re doing we are doing
Good work and you know people should be aware that to all three of those prongs they’re all important so yeah we all need to do extension but I think there does need to be dedicated people who are going to move that basic science or deeper science into more applications are we hungry
Deal I’m starving yeah thanks I think this question is for you David I mean Stephen I think you can help us in some ways one of the big problem that we have in western Canada is corn production in large propine okay this is a problem in BC and Alberta and they have tried
Many different ways of promoting cor production including jic acid injection and other things that that probably don’t work that much like they do in Spruce but I was trying at some point to find if there are some other Pines that have similar problems and I came across an old publication in septic proceedings
Many years ago where I think o Pine had the same problem as the beginning when they started the programs and at some point they tried spacing and they found that actually if you increase spacing between trees and that was able to promote corn production by 300% but they were also concerned about
The potential of managing solitary trees that could promote self pollination so I thought that maybe with loog we may have a simple problem that is actually how much we space trees between each other so you coming from the S with Rob how much spacing is still part of your
Management approach in promoting seed production in glary plan which we in western Canada can learn from yeah yeah so comb production for lob has not been as problematic as some of the Conifer species you guys deal with um we’re we’re very blessed in that factor uh
That being said we still we we still want to produce com producting facilities and and that’s that’s in the tops of our crowns the way that we do that with laal is largely fertilization um ample nitrogen in the in the summer late summer really correlates strongly with cone initiation
In the spring uh from a spacing standpoint I I have not I’m not familiar with research that’s looking at spacing and densities in order to promote cone conelet production uh we generally use a 20 feet by 20 feet maybe 30 by 30 ft type of metrics but we’re trying to take
Advantage of the small land base that we have and get as many ramets early as we can and then go ahead in Rogue um I wish I could help out more but most of the species that we deal with with in the South are are are not
Maybe not great long leaf is is kind of FAL with comb production um but not quite the same as the species you guys deal with have the have the last word on this and then we’re going to break for lunch I I really think Lodge P Pine is
Different and I think if we’re expecting some sort of cone production like our other conifers we’re looking in the wrong direction you know this is a species that evolved to put on a canopy seed bank and not to have these bumper crop years and so I I think there’s just intrinsic
Biology that we’re going to be in more of a steady state flow of of seed versus these bumper crops and if you’re looking for other things I suggest you know the serotinous species is where to look I think that’s the key to try to improving practices lunch is right next door let’s
Get back here for 1:00 I believe 1:00 Please