Breeding objectives for three silvicultural regimes of radiata pine

Abstract

A generic vertically integrated firm, comprising a production forest, a sawmill, and a pulp mill was modelled under three silvicultural regimes: direct to pulp, intermediate (includes production thinning), and intensive (includes production thinnings and pruning). The harvest age traits included in the breeding objective were total volume (m3/ha) and average wood density (kg/m3). Economic values for each trait were calculated as the difference in discounted profit for a unit marginal increase of volume or density, and expressed as relative weights to facilitate comparisons between the objectives. The methodology was applied to a Chilean case study using representative economic and production circumstances. The breeding objectives so derived were 1vol + 2.4den for pulp, 1vol + 1.1den for intermediate, and 1vol + 1.2den for the intensive regime, where vol and den are the breeding values for volume and density, respectively. The firm was profitable under all regimes. Genetic correlations between the objectives for each regime were higher than 0.9, indicating that a single breeding strategy with objective 1vol + 1.5den could be adopted, with almost no loss of genetic gain relative to selecting for a particular silvicultural regime.