Genetic parameters of growth, straightness and wood chemistry traits in Pinus pinaster

Introduction Tree breeding is giving an increasing attention to wood properties in order to better fit the requirements of the saw, board, pulp and paper industries. In particular, it has been reported that lignin and cellulose content display moderate to high heritabilities making them prime candidates for genetic improvement of wood chemistry. Moreover, these traits have been shown to be negatively correlated at both phenotypic and genetic levels. However, they have generally been evaluated against a narrow genetic background, and little is known about their correlations with mandatory selection criteria such as growth and straightness. Materials and methods In this study, we first investigated the performance of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with a non-destructive sampling method to assess chemical properties of wood in maritime pine. We afterwards estimated genetic parameters of growth, stem form and wood chemistry traits across a large genetic background in a progeny trial and clonally replicated progenies. Results Our results showed that removal of extractives prior to NIR spectra acquisition is highly recommended for achieving high accuracy in NIRS-PLSR prediction for wood chemistry traits in maritime pine. We further observed moderate heritabilities (0.15–0.55) for the studied traits. Wood chemistry traits were genetically inter-correlated (e.g., negatively between lignin and cellulose), whereas correlations with growth were not significant, indicating that growth and chemical properties could be improved independently.