Enhanced volume production will arise from a continuous output of new genetic combinations, performance tested in trials established on a range of sites. Testing allows both for selection of the best of the new combinations, and matching of these top selections to the most appropriate sites. The trials also allow for tests of tree quality and health, and the wood quality of the new combinations.
Enhanced stem straightness improves log grades from low value grades such as waste and pulpwood, into higher value grades, improving volume and grade recovery from the forest.
Testing for internal wood quality is a rapidly developing area of science, and the RPBC is well placed to apply new advances in wood quality testing through its shareholding in WQI Ltd. WQI also provide the RPBC with knowledge of the value of specific wood quality attributes to wood processors, allowing the appropriate emphasis to be placed on the genetic traits for wood quality in the breeding programme. Currently, the breeding programme recognises the wood quality traits of Branching, Density (corewood and outerwood), Spiral grain, Corewood stiffness, Internal checking, and Resinous defects. Work is currently underway within WQI to address the problem of wood stability in a more comprehensive way. As the results of this work come to hand, they will be applied to the testing protocols for the new genetic combinations in the RPBC trials.
Enhanced tree health, as assessed in the genetic trials, provides the basis for healthy forests. The broad genetic base from which new combinations are sourced provides robustness to resistance from current forest health problems and pests and diseases that may become established in future.
Improved forest values are derived from improved volume production, improved recovery of the volume produced, improved internal wood quality, and improved risk profiles for forest growing. The research and breeding programmes of the RPBC have a significant impact on all of these factors, and so on overall forest values.
The IP that is generated through the genetics research programme of the RPBC will be available to shareholders for use in their own genetics improvement programmes, or licensed to non-shareholders with shareholders benefiting through license fees. This IP will also be used by the RPBC in its own improvement programme, with shareholders benefiting through improved GF Plus revenues.
The RPBC is a consortium and shareholders cash injections are matched by NZ Government funding via the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.
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Technical Committee 
