Conserving and managing the trees of the future: genetic resources for Pacific Northwest forests.

Genetic resource management has historically called for altering the genetic structure of plant populations through selection for traits of interest such as rapid growth. Although this is still a principal component of tree breeding programs in the Pacific Northwest, managing genetic resources now also brings a clear focus on retaining a broad diversity within and among genetic populations. Genetic diversity, after all, allows species to adapt to the ever-changing environmental and biological stresses they experience through time, and provides the material for new traits of interest. Wise genetic resource management thus involves the monitoring and management of multiple levels of genetic variation that operate at different scales of space and time. Current challenges to genetic “manipulation” of any kind, even via old-fashioned breeding, are raising new questions about diversity that are now part of the expanding realm of tree breeding programs in the Northwest and elsewhere.