IN TODAY’S reality of travel restrictions, two of the Centre for Forest Value’s PhD candidates didn’t miss their chance to present on the global stage, at the Ecological Society of America conference last month.

Students Rose Brinkhoff and Travis Britton were invited to present their research virtually at the 105th annual conference, with this year’s theme being “harnessing the ecological data revolution”.

Rose’s presentation was titled the determinants of optimal leaf area in eucalypt plantations and highlighted data from her field experiments on the impact of nitrogen fertiliser on leaf area, photosynthesis, respiration, stomatal conductance and transpiration.

“Participating in a virtual conference was a good experience, and while there were some inevitable downsides of not being able to meet people in person, there were also some great aspects. I found the whole experience very rewarding and inspiring,” Rose said.

“My research results showed that extra leaves in response to high nitrogen may create carbon and water costs to Eucalyptus nitens on dry sites. It was great to see how my research fits in with what other people are doing across the world and connect with other researchers.”

For Travis, the opportunity to tailor his choice of preferred talks proved beneficial.

“I spent around two full days listening to all the talks. It was good being able to just pick and choose which talks you wanted to listen to, unlike a normal conference where you watch all the talks in between. But this had its cons as well, as some of these talks can be much more interesting than what you are expecting from the abstract,” Travis said.

Travis presented a talk titled Neighbours and tree size influence drought damage in an experimental forest with co-authors Chantelle Ridley, Tim Brodribb, Shane Richards and Mark Hovenden.

“I presented data from my first chapter which opportunistically involved assessing canopy damage at my field site following a severe drought (the driest on record for the area since 1874) in January 2019,” he said.

“We showed that competitive interactions between coexisting trees for water increased drought damage of two important forestry species (Eucalyptus regnans and Eucalyptus delegatensis) and that smaller trees were also more vulnerable.

“It was interesting to see that drought (in particular the effects of future drought) was a very active research area globally and that some of the findings from our study and site are applicable to forest systems more broadly.”

For more information on the conference click here.

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Culture shock leads to life-changing research journey

TO SAY his PhD journey started off as a culture shock, would be an understatement for Centre-affiliated PhD candidate Henry Nickolas.

Leaving his home of Kerala, India, to arrive in Hobart mid-July to five-degree weather, was the first of many new life experiences for Henry during his four-year tenure – but he wouldn’t change a thing.

“It was totally a new experience – different continent, language, clothing, food, culture, climate. It was a 100% change for me. The initial months were tough, but after that my journey was smooth and I made many friends from the University of Tasmania including great office mates and supervisors,” Henry said.

Henry’s research investigated the genetic control of economic traits in Eucalyptus globulus.

He said E. globulus is widely grown for pulpwood production in temperate regions of the world, however, there is increasing interest in using it for solid-wood products.

“I studied the genetic architecture of key pulpwood and solid-wood selection traits using two E. globulus progeny trials in a high-rainfall area (wet) of Tasmania, and a previously studied trial in a low rainfall area (dry). These trials were established using open-pollinated families from native trees sampled from 13 subraces,” he said.

“In general, correlations between most solid-wood and pulpwood traits were favourable, suggesting that past selection for pulpwood traits had neutral or favourable effects on many key solid-wood traits. We found that breeding for solid-wood and pulpwood are relatively compatible.”

Henry said the mixing and hybridisation of germplasm from different populations of tree species are increasingly promoted in strategies for climate adaptation and breeding, with only a few studies of inter-population hybridisation in E. globulus.

“This was another major area of my study, for which I have used a large population of full-sib families derived from inter and intra-race hybridisation of this species. First generation hybrids of E. globulus showed positive heterosis, suggesting that additional genetic gain in growth can be captured in deploying clones or full-sib families from inter-race crossing,” he said.

“The maternal and non-maternal reciprocal effects for the pulpwood selection traits were almost absent, which means that the directionality of crossing has little effect on the performance of hybrids. This finding makes the deployment of full-sib families of E. globulus using mass supplementary pollination easier, simplifies crossing for breeding purposes, and simplifies genetic evaluation models.”

Henry’s PhD was funded through an ARC linkage grant for which Tree Breeding Australia Ltd was the industrial partner, and as a Centre affiliate he has had the opportunity to engage with a broad forest research and industry community

Looking back on his PhD, industry collaboration with Sustainable Timber Tasmania and Forico provided Henry with stakeholder insight that he is extremely grateful for.

“This part really helped me to understand how to handle the requirements of stakeholders and work in that area. I think that is the most important skill a researcher needs,” he said.

Henry returned home to India after submitting his thesis, but the celebration was put on hold due to COVID-19 restrictions, including home quarantine. Today Henry is an Agricultural Officer with the Kerala Government and hopes one day to return to Tasmania. Henry already has three papers published out of his PhD, which can be viewed here.

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