Cloned pines gobble up the carbon

A Rotorua company is using technology to produce radiata pine able to capture up to double the amount of carbon of existing trees.

Forest Genetics is also able to produce the trees more quickly than conventional methods, giving the forestry industry an opportunity to rapidly expand plantations of sustainable trees.

The company has more than 50 field trials of radiata pine varieties nationwide and others overseas, all involving selecting trees with the best genetic material.

Usually, it takes up to eight years to grow trees mature enough for scientists to see desirable characteristics such as increased timber strength, disease resistance and carbon-capturing ability.

But by this time, the optimum time for propagating the trees from cuttings has passed, and they are too old.

Now, Forest Genetics has developed a way to propagate radiata pine with desirable attributes using cryo-preservation (freezing) technology licensed from Canadian company CellFor.

Forest Genetics founders and tree-breeding scientists Mike and Sue Carson said the cryo technology gave the breakthrough they needed to produce radiata pine with strong timber and good carbon-capturing ability.

"For the forest grower, this means he gets a double whammy," Dr Mike Carson said.

"Plantation forests [of these trees] are one of the ways we can start to deal with greenhouse gases."

To produce the most desirable radiata pine, tissue samples from all varieties under field trial are taken and placed in long-term storage using cryo-preservation.

Liquid nitrogen is used to freeze the samples which keeps the tissue juvenile and enables it to be extracted four to six years later, once the trials have established the best production varieties.

The tissue of the extracted varieties is then grown in a laboratory, where it can be replicated into thousands of little trees, which become "mother plants".

These mother plants are planted in a production nursery where they produce cuttings, which are planted in a nursery or greenhouse containers.

Once the cuttings reach the required size, they are planted on forest land.

All the trees are cloned to become new production varieties, but are not genetically engineered.

"There's no GE," Dr Sue Carson said. "Essentially it's a result of crossing the best with the best."

She said some varieties were showing the ability to capture double the amount of carbon of existing stands of radiata pine, although typically one of the improved varieties could capture 25 per cent more carbon than the next best option for new plantations.

"It's because it grows really fast and it has really high wood density."

The company sold its first improved radiata pine to local forest growers last year, and expects to supply several million plants to both the New Zealand and Australian markets within two years.

Forestry company Kaingaroa Timberlands and private investors have acquired interests in the business.