GENETIC CONTROL OF TRAITS RELEVANT TO SOLID-WOOD USE IN EUCALYPTUS PELLITA

Genetic control of wood properties relevant to solid-wood utilisation was evaluated in an 11-year-old progeny trial of Eucalyptus pellita at Pleiku, central Vietnam. Wood samples taken from total of 160 trees from 40 open-pollinated families chosen randomly from five seed sources were evaluated for wood basic density (BD), dimensional shrinkage, modulus of elasticity (MoE) and modulus of rupture (MoR). Differences among the seed sources were not significant for these wood traits. Narrow-sense heritabilities were moderate to high, ranging from 0.33 to 0.54, with coefficients of additive genetic variation ranging from 4.5–11.8%, except for longitudinal shrinkage, for which heritability was non-significant. Genetic correlations between BD and the other wood properties were not significant, excepting a positive relationship between BD and MoR. The genetic correlations between diameter at breast height and wood properties, and between shrinkage traits and MoE/MoR were non-significant. Breeding to improve these wood properties should be feasible and compatible with improving growth