Juvenile radiata pine clonal seed orchard management in Galicia (NW Spain)

A juvenile radiata pine clonal seed orchard (Pinus radiata D. Don) in Sergude (northwestern Spain), comprising 57 clones, was evaluated for fertility, offspring diversity and genetic drift during 4 years. Flower and fruit production was used to asses clone fertility in the orchard. Fertility variation measured as “sibling coefficient” was found to be an average of 1.5, having high genetic diversity (0.99) and low coancestry (0.013). The clones varied in fertility from year to year. Effective population size in the orchard was between 35 and 40, indicating that between 60.30 and 69 %, the clones contributed effectively to seed yield. One way to improve seed yield in the orchard is by increasing the effective population size. Thinning and pruning highly reproductive clones of gibberellin application might be useful in increasing effective population size. The orchard’s parental balance showed consistent improvement over time. Cone and seed characteristics were also investigated. The results showed that significant genetic variation exists among clones for cone width and length; total, sound and empty seed number; as well as 100 seed weight. The seed orchard is still in a juvenile phase; moreover, the broad-sense heritability and variation data obtained in this study could be very valuable in the management practices of the existing radiata pine clonal seed orchard and can be also used for better planning of advanced generation of clonal seed orchards in Spain.