Differences in growth and wood properties between narrow and normal crowned types of Norway spruce grown at narrow spacing in Southern Finland

Abstract

In recent years there has been increased interest in the so called narrow crowned Norway spruce (Picea abies f. pendula), which is a rare mutant of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karsten), as a suitable wood raw material source for pulp and paper production. This is because it is less sensitive to competition than the normal crowned Norway spruce, and thus, could be more productive especially at dense spacing. In the above context, we investigated how the growth and yield (such as height, diameter, stem volume and ring width) in addition to wood density traits and fibre properties (such as wood density, fibre length and width, cell wall thickness and fibre coarseness) were affected in trees from 9 full-sib families representing narrow crowned Norway spruce grown at narrow spacing of 1 m x 1 m in Southern Finland. For comparison, we used normal crowned Norway spruce trees from 6 breeding regions. We found that, compared to growth and yield traits, wood density traits and fibre properties showed, on average, lower phenotypic variations. In addition, these variations were smaller for narrow crowned families than for normal crowned genetic entries. Narrow crowned families also showed, on average, higher growth and yield and fibre length, but lower wood density. Moreover, the phenotypic correlations between growth, yield, wood density traits and fibre properties, ranged, on average, from moderate (narrow crowned) to high (normal crowned). As a whole, the growth and wood properties of narrow crowned families were found to be less sensitive to tree competition than the normal crowned genetic entries used as a comparison.