Knowing
Your Hybrid Poplar Clone
Useful Information When Purchasing Poplars
When planting hybrid poplars in either a shelterbelt
for your farm or as an alternative crop, it is always important
to ensure that the cultivar (a specific tree or genotype) being
selected is the same cultivar being planted. Many cultivars or
clones currently available are known by a common name such as
‘Walker’ or ‘Russian’ or ‘Griffin’. These trees have typically
been selected based on years of testing and once identified, are
propagated by stem or branch cuttings that have been taken from
a ‘known’ individual of that name.
One of the challenges however, is that over time
and after many years of serial propagation of a particular clone,
labels can get mixed up or a cutting is accidentally taken from
the wrong tree. These problems, although not thought to be common,
can have a profound impact when thousands of individuals are being
propagated from a single source and distributed widely.
Fortunately, when a ‘new’ clone is selected and
a ‘new’ common name is given to a tree (such as 'Green Giant',
which was later identified by laboratory analysis to be 'Brooks
#6'), there are DNA fingerprinting techniques readily available
to check and see if the ‘new’ clone matches the fingerprint pattern
of an older existing clone. This same technique is widely used
in forensic medicine and in identifying animals that have been
harvested illegally by poachers.
Things you might want to consider when purchasing
a large number of cuttings from a selected clone are:
1. Has the nursery had the material checked to
confirm identity?
2. Where did the nursery get their supply of cuttings
from? e.g.: PFRA (Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration),
or another nursery, or do they have stoolbeds of their own?
3. Would they provide leaf tissue for you to get
the sample checked at a commercial laboratory (e.g. GenServe Labs,
Saskatoon - www.src.sk.ca/html/labs_facilities/genserve_labs/index.cfm)
to confirm identity?
If these trees are being used as an alternative
crop and when many hectares have been planted based on an expectation
of performance, differences in growth rates among the selected
clones could have a large economic impact on the producer if the
wrong clone is planted.
For further information please contact the
Poplar Council of Canada
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Copyright © 2004 Poplar Council
of Canada
Last edit:
2004-11-15
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