Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Poster: Forest Trees
P5i_11.html

QTL AND CANDIDATE GENE ANALYSIS OF WOOD PROPERTY TRAITS IN LOBLOLLY PINE

¹ Dept. of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis CA 95616 USA

² Institute of Forest Genetics, USDA Forest Service, Placerville CA 95667 USA

³ Weyerhaeuser Company, Western Forest Research Center, Centralia WA 98531 USA

⁴ Weyerhaeuser Company, Weyerhaeuser Technology Center, Tacoma WA 98477 USA

⁵ Institute of Forest Genetics, USDA Forest Service, Davis CA 95616 USA

Our laboratory is involved in National Science Foundation-funded research to identify and characterize large numbers of genes important in the formation of wood and its derived components, pulp and paper. Quantitative trait loci influencing physical wood properties in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.), including early- and late-wood specific gravity, the volume percentage of late-wood, and early- and late-wood microfibril angle, were detected in previous experiments (Sewell et al., 2000, TAG, in press). Current research is focussed on two areas: 1) verifying the presence of these QTLs in both a larger, independent sample of progeny, and in a larger, unrelated pedigree, and 2) identifying and genetic mapping potential candidates from loblolly pine xylem tissue EST databases known to be involved in wood biochemistry. The co-localization of wood property QTLs and candidate genes will lead to future association studies of wood phenotypes with candidate gene alleles in natural populations in linkage equilibrium.