Contact: Pengxin Lu
Traditional vegetative propagation involves producing new trees from cuttings taken from existing trees. Somatic embryogenesis is a promising alternative, as it allows researchers to produce many vigorous, genetically identical trees more quickly and efficiently. This technique involves taking an embryo from a seed or tissue from a leaf or bud of a tree with desirable traits and culturing the tissue on growth medium regulated by plant growth hormones to create a mass of cells that can multiply rapidly. These cells can be induced to form many new embryos, each of which can become a new tree. An important advantage of somatic embryogenesis is that it allows for cryopreservation, in which tree embryonic tissues are stored in liquid nitrogen for a long time without losing their ability to multiply. They can easily be thawed and used to continue producing embryos if field research shows that their genotype is superior.
Working with scientists from the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre, researchers have established a somatic embryogenesis applications lab for a range of projects. For example, they will be able to mass-produce white pine hybrids that can resist blister rust. Researchers are also planning to work with forest industry partners to use somatic embryogenesis to produce white spruce seedlings with superior growth and quality traits for test plantations and eventually operational plantings (white spruce is gaining favour as it tends to produce more wood volume than black spruce by the end of a rotation).
