Resilience & Climate Matching Field Trial with improved Sitka spruce
- Later this year (autumn/winter 2024/25) the Co-op will be setting up its most ambitious field trial yet. With the help of match funding from DEFRA, we will be planting a large scale trial to test 100 families of full-sibling (both parents known) offspring across 5 UK sites.
- The trial is intended to test the improved material to verify predicted gains (see above).
- Due to the nature of the materials being used (full-sibling, clonal) the experiment will also allow us to look for resilience traits.
- The trial sites are being selected to cover a wide geographic range (Scotland England and Wales) and will include one marginal site specifically selected to test for drought resilience.
- In this way we hope to gather information which in future will allow SS breeding cohorts to be developed to match UK climate zones.