In 1963 a first world consultation on forest genetics and tree improvement was arranged at Stockholm by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in collaboration with the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO). The report of that historic meeting was published in a special issue of Unasylva, as a service toward quickening the pace of tree breeding work around the world. Now it is time to issue the report of a second world consultation, held in Washington, D.C., in August 1969.
At the Stockholm consultation the surge of breeding experimentation started during the 1950s was given onward direction in a broad new wave. Governments, universities and industries, in view of the potentials of improved varieties of forest trees, accelerated research and development. FAO held a technical conference on the exploration, utilization and conservation of plant genetic resources in 1967 at Rome, and subsequently established a panel of experts on forest gene resources. IUFRO developed guidelines for provenance research and testing and recommended procedures for progeny testing and standards for seed certification. National and international efforts to collect seed for forest tree breeding experiments expanded, notably in western North America, Central America, the Bahama Islands, the Mediterranean region, Australia and southeast Asia. FAO actively supported tree breeding and seed collection programmes in a number of developing countries.
The participants in the Washington consultation learned that the wave had grown into a forceful tide of research, development and action programmes which, it was claimed, had already substantially raised the genetic quality of forest trees in many areas. The decade ahead could be expected to see the progress swell into a flood in the developed countries. Hopefully there would also be an overflow into more of the developing countries, particularly in the tropics. During the second United Nations Development Decade, breeding to produce high-yielding timber varieties should become commonplace. Breeding would be accelerated to solve the special problems of planting on difficult sites and of urban forestry. Revolutionary research breakthroughs should preview the new technology of the 1980s.
These were the general conclusions of the Washington consultation where each discussion was focussed upon an assigned topic through a position paper presented by a senior rapporteur. A collection of special invited papers on the same subjects were briefly summarized by corapporteurs. Immediately following each meeting, a committee under the technical chairman drafted formal recommendations and suggested where significant changes might be made in the position papers.
The latter, as amended and edited, are set out as a series of chapters in this issue of Unasylva. The other papers are being issued separately, but a list of titles and authors is given in Appendix 2. The recommendations to governments, international organizations, research institutions and to tree breeders are also included in this issue. These recommendations point to national and international needs, opportunities that should be exploited, and methods to improve research and action programmes. They constitute one of the most important outcomes of the consultation.
The meticulous arrangements made by the organizing committee, the high standard of contributions and the vigour of the discussions left no doubt of the success of this meeting. The method of approach admirably complemented that of the Stockholm meeting, and the two together constitute a comprehensive survey of the whole field of forest tree breeding.
Another encouraging feature of the Washington consultation was the evidence of close cooperation between FAO, IUFRO and its member institutes, and individual scientists. This cooperation led to the accomplishment of nearly all of the recommendations made by the first consultation in 1963, which will be found reproduced in Appendix 3, with notes on the progress since recorded.
It is to be hoped that the next decade will see the implementation of the recommendations of the second consultation. This should prove possible judged by the strong personal friendships made or renewed at Washington, that bridge the oceans between continents and that penetrate the political curtains between nations.
PHOTO: FOUNDATION FOR FOREST TREE BREEDING, FINLAND
