Towards effective European forest management
The key project objective was to improve current knowledge on the biological and ecological processes that specify the genetic architecture of the three species in Europe. Additionally, the scale over which localised adaptation occurs was also of primary concern as it is related to the priorities given in the selection of local seed sources for planting. Thereby, researchers conducted a number of field and laboratory studies, involving the investigation of patterns of genetic variation and local adaptation in three native Farinas species in six countries. Observations on flowering, fruiting and leaf flushing showed that moving material over large latitudinal or longitudinal ranges should be avoided. Such moving could cause forking and poor seed set due to poor adaptation to local climate. Moreover, studies on genetic variation included reciprocal transplant experiments and use of molecular markers. For assessing the geographic scale of adaptive variation, the experiments showed that provenance description for ash should be confined at scales of at least 200-300km without compromising local adaptation. In addition, high performance provenances could be moved within the same range for achieving results of the same quality. With the aid of molecular markers such as chloroplast and nuclear markers the levels of neutral genetic variation in stands of ash across Europe was assessed. Chloroplast markers, being inherited, enable the investigation of the movement of species via seed dispersal over long time periods, offering a representation of wide scale population structure over large distances. Nuclear microsatellite markers contributed to the evaluation of the overall genetic variation in ash species, the differences within stands and between stands, and patterns of variation distribution across Europe. These investigations indicated high diversity and low population differentiation in all three species, suggesting high levels of gene flow among populations. A set of useful conclusions and recommendations was prepared in a form of guidelines for ash seed source selection. Moreover, the more complete picture of population genetics, patterns of gene flow and adaptation in these species could benefit current forest management policies. These would be further improved by taking into consideration sustainability, ecological restoration, biodiversity conservation and landscape character.