Peter Volker
No they are not GM trees (Are they GM trees?)
First I will establish my credentials – I have a PhD in eucalypt genetics and breeding. I currently work for Forestry Tasmania and have had a long career in plantation forestry with a range of employers, including myself.
Eucalyptus nitens is native to the central highlands of Victoria, the Errinundra region of east Gippsland and a couple of isolated populations in southern and northern NSW. It has been the subject of breeding programs mostly by North Forest Products (now Gunns) and Forestry Tasmania. These are conventional breeding programs which have been going for about 20 years. It is only in the past 15 years that seed for plantations has come from seed orchards, prior to that most nitens seed came directly from the native stands in Victoria.
The breeding of eucalypts involve testing seeds from across the natural range in provenance tests (provenance = place of origin). These tests consist of putting the seedlings in replicated trials on a range of sites to see which ones grow best. After that provenances and individual trees of outstanding growth or with other good characteristics such as wood quality, disease resistance etc are selected. The best ones are grafted onto standard rootstocks (usually from seed collected from the same tree) and the grafts are put into a seed orchard. Eventually the orchard produces seed and this is what ends up in plantations.
The seed orchard is also progressively culled as we learn more about the performance of the progeny of each parent tree in the orchard. And so the cycle continues.
There have been hundreds of books and scientific articles written on tree breeding and perhaps if people want to comment publically a little research, even if only on Google scholar would be helpful.
Eucalyptus nitens is almost impossible to propagate by vegetative means, so even if it was able to be Genetically Modified (GM) by inserting “foreign” genes it would not be able to be multiplied for a plantation program.
Eucalyptus globulus has been cloned successfully and non-modified clones are used commercially in Spain and Portugal.
The only GM eucalypts that I am aware of are tropical hybrids of Eucalyptus grandis x urophylla which have been produced on an experimental scale in South Africa and Brazil. However, I don’t think there are any commercial plantings as yet – but I may be wrong.
The Australian forest industry has long held the view that the use of GM eucalypts in Australia is not socially acceptable at the moment and probably never will be. The focus is on conventional breeding programs. There are environmental benefits in conventional breeding of a number of eucalypt and acacia species to address not only commercial but also environmental issues such as drought, climate change etc.
The University of Tasmania is a world leader in genetics of eucalypts from a production and conservation point of view. I suggest people who want to know more should consult the considerable scientific literature that has been published over the past 20 years.
One last thing, I don’t claim to be expert in medical issues, so I find it interesting that a number of medical professionals claim to be expert in forest science.
