Applied Tree Improvement: A Practical Manual

There is an urgent word wide need to raise the production of wood in future through afforestation schemes. This need can efficiently be achieved on any given site, beside other factors, through the correct choice of species, improved seed source and specific silvicultural treatments. This is what precisely may be termed as 'tree improvement'. Thus, in other words, without tree improvement, forestry can never come close to reaching the goal of optimum production and productivity.

Most of the world's current planting programmes in forestry domain are still based on plant raised from seeds which are collected from unselected populations. Nevertheless, now there is an  increasing trend towards the use of phenotypically superior stocks as seed sources.

Under the present scenario globally achieving “green revolution” in forests, tree improvement seems to be inevitable. This manual which has been prepared for B.Sc.
 
( forestry) and M.Sc. ( forestry) students, shows the practical methods in tree improvement. We hope the exercise will prove a great boon for students of forestry and the budding foresters, who are engaged in practical tree improvement in the field. The manual provides only the practical related exercise and the theoretical knowledge can be grasped in theoretical classes and books.