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Partners : FCBA (Coord.), INRAE BioForA, Humbolt University (DE), INRA (AR), LUKE (Fi), NEIKER (SP), UPSC (SE)
BioForA staff involved : Marie-Anne Lelu-Walter, Caroline Teyssier, Armelle Delile
Funding : ERANET - Cofund call - Innovating forest-based bioeconomy
Budget : 200K€

Summary :

The project's ambition is to apply novel approaches to clone a genotype, not only from juvenile, but also from mature tissues, and to develop a value added chain and joint strategy to bring high-quality somatic trees at acceptable costs towards multi-varietal forestry (MVF) of economically relevant conifers (pine, spruce, larch, Douglas-fir).
of the first call for tender of the European ForestValue program, "innovating forest-based bioeconomy". The 7 partners (including FCBA and INRAE) from 6 countries in Europe (France, Germany/HUB, Spain/NEIKER, Finland/LUKE, Sweden/UPSC-SLU) and Argentina (INTA) aim to develop multi-varietal silviculture of conifers (pine, spruce, Douglas, larch) based on an innovative vegetative multiplication technique, somatic embryogenesis. FCBA (BSA cluster) and INRAE (UMR BioForA) have been developing this promising biotechnology in partnership since 2004 (maritime pine and Douglas in particular) and with the technical support of XYLOBIOTECH.
Coordinated by FCBA (J.-F. Trontin) and HUB (A. Rupps), this multinational ERA-NET Cofund project within the framework of the "ForestValue - Innovating forest-based bioeconomy" program will last 3 years (2019-2022) and has a total budget of about 2 M€. It is supported in France by ANR as well as FNR (Germany), MINCyT (Argentina), MINECO-AEI (Spain), MMM (Finland) and VINNOVA (Sweden). ForestValue is an EU-funded programme (Horizon 2020, convention N°773324).
Multi-varietal silviculture allows the production of improved varieties based on vegetative propagation. In the context of climate change and the bioeconomy, it is a complementary strategy to sexual reproduction (seed multiplication) to intensify production in forest plantations. It is no longer necessary to wait for sexual maturity to produce the varieties. Genetic gains per unit of time are therefore higher. Furthermore, vegetative propagation offers greater flexibility for renewing the range of varieties on offer according to environmental constraints and socio-economic expectations.
It is mainly conifers that are grown in plantations. Varieties are exclusively produced in seed orchards because these species are difficult to multiply by simple cutting. The development of somatic embryogenesis, a promising technology for the vegetative propagation of seeds, offers new prospects for multi-varietal silviculture in conifers. Technically equivalent to the microcutting of the embryo found in each seed, it has all the characteristics of an industrializable process for the production of seedlings.