Genetic Variation in Cold Hardiness and Phenology Between and Within Turkish Red Pine (Pinus brutia Ten.) Populations: Implications for Seed Transfer

Abstract

Wind-pollinated seeds from 40 trees (half-sib families) were collected from each of six Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia Ten.) populations in southern Turkey. Two-year old seedlings were evaluated for growth, phenology and cold resistance in a common garden experiment established in Ankara, located outside the species’ natural range. Each family was represented with a six-tree row plot within each of the three replications. The below freezing temperatures (-15.2°C) observed in January and February of 2000 were sufficient to observe visually- assessable-cold damage to the seedlings. The populations significantly differed in all traits under investigation except for second flushing in 1999. Populations originating from more inland and higher elevation areas were more resistant to cold than coastal low elevation populations. Families within populations were significantly different as regards all traits except HT00. Family heritability for bud burst was 0.40, and ranged from 0.12 to 0.37 for height, and from 0.20 to 0.23 for bud set. Final height of cold damage prone seedlings was shorter than cold tolerant seedlings. Families with early bud-set, later bud-burst and shorter second flush shoots suffered less from cold damage. Considering the expected climate change in the eastern Mediterranean, there is a potential for using this species outside its natural range, especially in sites experiencing more continental climate since it will be possible to move the species 200-300 m in altitude and 2-3 degrees in latitude.

Population variation in drought resistance and its relationship with adaptiveand physiological seedling traits in Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia Ten.)

“…Information about the sampled populations is given in Table 1. A detailed description of these populations and the sampling procedure of families has been provided elsewhere (Lise et al, 2007;Kandemir et al, 2010).…”

“…The trait data on height growth in the year 2000 (the same as height growth after drought here), bud burst (BB), and bud set (BS) in the year 2000 from Kandemir et al (2010) were included in the current study, since these traits are also important in evaluating the effect of drought stress on seedling growth in the same year (i.e. in 2000).…”

“…(1)), due to confounding effects, the genetic and phenotypic correlations could not be properly estimated. It is expected that coastal and inland populations of Turkish red pine will have different responses to drought (Kandemir et al, 2010). This may result in different patterns of correlation in inland and coastal populations.…”

“…The Inner Anatolian steppe, including the study site, will probably become a potential site for future Turkish red pine plantations. Given the strong genetic correlation between cold sensitivity (Kandemir et al, 2010) and DRO, physiological differences among cold-sensitive and cold-resistant families with respect to physiological traits related to drought resistance are of interest. PC was significantly different between cold-sensitive and coldresistant families, but not PMS.…”

“…Therefore, early testing of the adaptability of genotypes is important. Considering the possible climate change scenarios in Turkey (Kandemir et al, 2010), information on the adaptive characteristics (especially drought-related) of seed sources of Turkish red pine will be vitally important for future plantations. However, the obtained information about growth characteristics, physiological traits, and DRO should be further investigated with long-term field tests, such as provenance and progeny tests, conducted with a large number of populations in reciprocal field experiments.…”