Quantum Forest logs are written by Luis A. Apiolaza in Christchurch, New Zealand.
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It has been fifteen months since I stopped working full time in genetics. I was feeling tired—some may even say burned out—of the topic. After ten years there was nothing really exciting. I think that I was trapped by the routine, dealing with small problems and loosing track of the big picture. I did not completely stopped working on genetics, but I have been spending less than ten percent of my time on it.
Two weeks ago I started thinking again on tree breeding, but mostly about big picture items. For example, how to integrate different parts of breeding programs rather than how to obtain an infinitesimally small covariance component. I realised that I still enjoy very much this area of genetics and breeding.
This experience got me thinking about the rise and demise of research groups. During the 1970s the tree breeding group in the New Zealand Forest Research Institute (now Forest Research) was one of the most exciting places to be in, putting forward new breeding strategies, using selection index and type B correlations. Later, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the School of Forest Resources and Conservation from the University of Florida was a very interesting place, and they were busy applying BLP (basically selection index) to every possible dataset. Starting in the mid 1990s, the School of Plant Science and the Forestry Cooperative Research Centres based at the University of Tasmania thrived evangelising forest geneticists about BLUP and breeding objectives. All those research groups are still active, but in general they are not at the forefront of tree breeding anymore. Some researchers will apply the same techniques to 300 datasets in one go rather than to a single one, but that is not exciting or very rewarding either from a research or an industrial viewpoint… It may be that researchers got tired after a wild ride.
Another interesting point is that many of these groups developed a reputation applying techniques developed in the animal breeding world (e.g., selection index-BLP, BLUP, breeding objectives). It is not that people in forestry are not very creative, but we do lack critical mass when compared to animal breeders. It may be that the new exciting topics will come again from animal breeding. It may also come from other areas or even be developed from the inside. I am just happy to have recovered the “love for the trade” again, and am looking forward to dedicate part of my time to work in “big picture” items, wherever they come from.
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