News: 8 September 07
Global Expert investigates mystery plant ailment
Bay of Plenty forestry biotechnology company Horizon2 has gone global in its efforts to find out why some of the mother plants from one of its elite pine tree breeding programmes are mysteriously failing.
The host plants, which are the result of a sophisticated cloning programme, produce up to 50 cuttings each for sale to forest owners looking for superior tree stock with high growth rates and desirable wood property traits.
There is no impact on product quality because these plants are eliminated from the production system but, ultimately, the problem impacts the bottom line and Horizon2’s ability to deliver product at a reasonable cost.
For the last year, staff at Horizon2’s Whakatane base have been trying to work out why some of the mother plants are turning yellow and then becoming so weak that they snap off at ground level.
“We take the cuttings off them by hand,” says Kiri Armstrong, a Propagation Technologist with Horizon2, “and just moving some of the branches a little to take a cutting, or brushing past the tree while walking down the row, can cause them to snap at the base.”
The problem is also slowing production as Horizon2 is forced to apply an additional, much slower production step to 50 percent of the crop, in order to mitigate against the problem until the cause is found.
Horizon2 was formed in 2004, out of a merger between two leading forestry biotechnology entities – Carter Holt Harvey’s Forest Genetics and Rubicon’s Trees & Technology.
Somatic embryogenesis was selected as the preferred cloning process because it generates more trees more quickly and the base tissue can be cryogenically preserved and used many decades later if its progeny are high performers and forest companies want more of them.
“We’ve been learning more about somatic embryogenesis and upscaling the technology during a research and development project over the last few years. We’ve made significant advances towards optimising the technology, but this problem has us stumped,” says Ms Armstrong.
She says the mother trees behave normally until they have been planted in the field for six to 12 months. Some then turn yellow, indicating reduced uptake of nutrients, and often form a callus at the point where they later break off.
The Foundation? for Research, Science and Technology has invested $800,000 in Horizon2’s research and development project into somatic embryogenesis techniques, through its Technology for Business Growth (TBG?) scheme.
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