Highlights - TBGRC 2007-2008 Annual Meeting and Report

PROGRAM, SOCIETY

• Grant support strong
  - 800K to 1 million/yr in 07-09
  - Industry funds ~8% of total
  - Great leverage continues!

• Center for Advanced Forestry (CAFS) established (~19k/yr, National Science Foundation):
  - NSF Center began at OSU, then merger with Purdue, now extended to four universities
  - Collaboration with NC State, Virginia Tech, Purdue
  - You will be invited and encouraged to attend these meetings, with broader forestry focus

  Conifer breeding and physiology
  Growth and yield
  Soils and nutrition

  - Currently support for phyB project, general Coop work

• Success in obtaining USDA APHIS permit for field trials of flowering trees of many types
  - Poplar and sweetgum

• Success in obtaining USDA APHIS permit for field trials of flowering trees of many types
  - Poplar and sweetgum

• Strong participation in natl/intl regulatory-biosafety activities:
  - Society of American Foresters position statement
  - PRRI: Public Research and Regulation Initiative, Co-head of project on GM trees

  UN Convention on Biodiversity, Cartagena Protocol negotiations
  Attempt to ban "field releases" of GE trees
  Attended meetings in Montreal, Rome, and Bonn

• Participation in US Natl Res Council Committees that concern GE crops and trees
  - GMO Ecological Issues for Wildlands
  - Future of Plant Genomics
  

• High quality of field study of yield and competition in GA-inhibited, semi-dwarf trees
  

• Strong growth effects seen in the greenhouse from insertion of native poplar GA genes
  

• Strong, narrow crown phenotypes seen in phytochrome B-RNAi field study
  - Expanded, intensified field study led by Glenn Howe, funded by DOE
  
  

RESEARCH

• High quality of field study, new mutants continue to be seen, in study of activationtagged trees
  

• Excellent survival and growth in field study of transgenic sterile(?) sweetgum
  

• High survival in clone bank established with >1,000 events, >5,000 trees, with sterility genes (>95%)
  

• Continued strong pollen reduction in 12-year old male-sterile transgenic trees
  

• Marked changes in wood quality and growth in lignin-modified, antisense-4CL trees in field trial
  
  

SYMPOSIUM SEPT 2008

• Physiological sculpture of plants: New visions and capabilities for crop development
  - New Phytologist Tansley Symposium
  - 17-20 September 2008
  - Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon USA
  

• Goal: Integration, vision, about breakthrough possibilities based on new genomic plant science
  

• Raised >50K to support meeting