Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook) is one of the major commercial conifer species in China. The present study concentrated on the assessment of growth, wood property traits, and strobili number in a 12-year grafted clone test of 62 Chinese fir breeding parents, aiming to describe the variation and correlations between these traits and to identify parent clones with the highest potential for future breeding. The results indicate that all of the growth (height, diameter at breast height, stem volume, crown-width) and wood property (wood basic density and hygroscopicity) traits varied significantly (p < 0.01) among clones, with coefficients of variation ranging from 7.6% to 30.6%. Furthermore, these traits consistently had a moderate to high (0.39-0.87) repeatability estimate (broad-sense heritability). Remarkable clonal differences were also observed for the production of male and female strobili. Phenotypic correlations among growth traits were strong (p < 0.01) and positive. Significantly negative correlations (p < 0.01 or 0.05) were found between wood basic density and growth (except for height) and hygroscopicity. The production of male and female strobili appeared to be significantly (p < 0.01) positively correlated with each other. A notable number of faster-growing parent clones were identified (n = 30); 11 of these had higher density wood with an average realized gain of 10.5% in diameter, and a 5.4% gain in wood basic density. When selection was made for growth and strobili, 10 faster-growing parent clones with medium to high production of female strobili were identified. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 3800

To determine the phenotypic variation in 700 ten-year grafted Chinese fir collected from six provinces in southern China, 10 phenotypic traits were investigated: tree height, diameter at breast height, bark thickness, volume of timber, heartwood ratio, density of wood, hygroscopicity, tracheid length, tracheid diameter, and ratio of tracheid length to tracheid diameter. Abundant phenotypic variation was found among the six populations; the phenotypic variation coefficients all exceeded 10%, and the largest was for volume of timber. Significant variation (p < 0.01 or 0.05) in traits was found among the populations, except for diameter at breast height, heartwood ratio, and tracheid diameter, while all traits differed significantly (p < 0.01) within populations. The high value of repeatability (broad-sense heritability) suggested moderate genetic control of the traits. The 10 traits were strongly correlated within the entire population; strong positive correlations (p < 0.01) were observed between growth traits, and significant negative correlations (p < 0.01 or 0.05) were found between the density of wood and most other characteristics, except for heartwood ratio and ratio of tracheid length to tracheid diameter. Using diameter at breast height and density of wood as criteria, 98 relatively fast-growing genotypes with relatively high wood basic density were identified.

Large ex situ germplasm collections of plants generally contain significant diversity. A set of 700 well-conserved Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook) clones from six provinces in southern China in the ex situ gene bank of Longshan State Forest, was analyzed using 21 simple sequence repeat markers, with the aim of assessing the genetic diversity of these germplasm resources. Genetic analysis revealed extensive genetic variation among the accessions, with an average of 8.31 alleles per locus and a mean Shannon index of 1.331. Excluding loci with null alleles, we obtained a low level of genetic differentiation among provinces, consistent with the interpopulation genetic variation (1%). Three clusters were identified by STRUCTURE, which did not match the individuals’ geographical provenances. Ten traits related to growth and wood properties were quantified in these individuals, and there was substantial variation in all traits across individuals, these provide a potential source of variation for genetic improvement of the Chinese fir. Screening large collections for multiple-trait selective breeding programs is laborious and expensive; a core collection of 300 accessions, representative of the germplasm, was established, based on genotypic and phenotypic data. The identified small, but diverse, collections will be useful for further genome-wide association studies.

Two efficient somatic embryogenesis systems were developed in Chinese fir, the most important conifer for industrial wood production in China. Three development stages (cleavage polyembryony, dominant embryo, and precotyledon) of immature embryos derived from 25 genotypes of open-pollinated mother trees were used as initial explants. Cleavage polyembryony-stage embryos with a 12.44% induction rate was the most embryogenic response stage. The highest frequency of embryogenic callus (13.86%) induction was obtained from DCR medium supplemented with 1.5 mg L−1 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 0.3 mg L−1 kinetin (KN). An average of 53.33 early somatic embryos were produced from approximately 0.2 g (fresh weight) embryogenic callus after 2 weeks of incubation on medium supplemented with 50 μmol L−1 abscisic acid (ABA) and 100 g L−1 polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000. About 53% dominant embryos have an embryogenic response after a 6-week cultivation on medium supplemented with 1.0–2.0 mg L−1 benzyladenine (BA), 0.2 mg L−1 naphthylacetic acid (NAA) or 2,4-D, and 0.004 mg L−1 thidiazuron (TDZ). After three successive transfer cultures on medium supplemented with 1.5 mg L−1 BA, 0.2 mg L−1 NAA, and 0.004 mg L−1 TDZ, 4.49–16.51% of the embryos developed into somatic embryos.

Abstract:The success of a tree breeding program largely depended on the available genetic variability of the germplasms. Our present study aimed to assess the phenotypic variation and DNA variability using sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers among 50 Cunninghamia lanceolata (Chinese fir) genotypes. Extensive phenotypic variations (p < 0.05 or 0.01) were found for all the growth and wood property traits (height, diameter at breast height, stem volume, and wood basic density, hygroscopicity, heart-wood ratio, tracheid length, tracheid diameter and tracheid length-diameter ratio) with coefficients of variation spanning from 6.8 to 31.3%. At the DNA level, thirty-five SRAP primer combinations produced 498 bands with 89.4% polymorphism across genotypes; moreover, the Nei's gene diversity was detected to be ranged between 0.204 and 0.373 (mean = 0.279), while the Shannon's Information Index stretched from 0.324 to 0.555 with an average value of 0.427. Significance (p < 0.01) of the variability of SRAP polymorphism among genotypes was further demonstrated by AMOVA. These results indicated a relatively high level of genetic diversity in genotypes. The SRAP' dendrogram additionally revealed that these genotypes could be split into 7 clusters with higher discriminating capacity over that of phenotype. Notably, a total of 99 statistically significant (p < 0.05) marker-trait associations related to the growth and wood property traits were identified. These marker-trait associations corresponded to 77 different SRAP markers with R 2 (percentage of the phenotypic variation explained by marker) ranging from 8.3 to 26.4%. Additional key words:Chinese fir, wood property, molecular marker, dendrogram and marker-trait association.