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Rooting Eucalyptus cuttings... by millions... everyday!
Fig. 1: Clonal gene bank. Multiple copies of several select genotypes are kept as pruned Mini-Hedges and used as mother plants. From these, cuttings are harvested regularly to multiply vegetatively the fastest growing high yielding strains of the hybrid Eucalyptus urophylla x grandis.
When you manage an industrial forestry resource the way the Brazilian pulp and paper industry does, the motto is always "bigger, better, faster". And that starts from the very beginning! It means that each cultivated hectare should yield as much product as possible in as little time as possible at the lowest cost as possible without losing quality and under the principles of sustainable forestry.
Genetic improvement is a must for that. Tree breeding a need. It does not cost money, it saves money! After selecting the best performing specimens from wild or controlled crosses, what forest geneticists want is a whole estate filled with a new generation of supertrees. And the fastest way to deploy genetic gain is no other than mass propagation of select strains: Eucalyptus clonal forestry.
Fig. 2: Detail of the clonal Eucalyptus Mini-Hedge. Eucalyptus resurrection happens from dormant buds after each cutting harvest, providing new future cuttings, and hence new ramets.
All in all, nothing different from what you do at home when propagating fig trees, bananas, agaves or a thousand other different plants whose fruits we use or whose looks we enjoy everyday. Except that for this process to be cost-effective in the case of Eucalyptus propagation, you need some extra ingredients...
Read the whole story & see photos of Eucalyptus cutting rooting at Eucalyptologics
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