Saltgrow hybrid breeding program for commercial rehabilitation of saline discharge sites
Specifications
- Client: Saltgrow
-
Scope:
Direction of the Saltgrow salt tolerant hybrid program for breeding, development and commercialisation of salt-tolerant hybrid eucalypts for commercial rehabilitation of saline land including:
- Selection of breeding parents and crossing program
- Clonal propagation of hybrid progeny
- Securing of partners for trials
- Trial design
- Trial establishment, management, measurement and analysis
- Selection of elite clones
- Supporting research including saline land management, timber properties, catchment impacts
-
Challenge:
Dryland salinity is a major issue affecting agricultural production and the environment. Across Australia, dryland salinity is projected to affect over 17million ha of productive farmland.
-
Solution:
The XylonovA R&D Program, and Saltgrow hybrid Eucalypt program aimed to turn a major environmental problem into an opportunity by breeding fast-growing salt-tolerant eucalypt hybrids with desirable wood properties for re-vegetation of saline affected land. The vision of the program was a commercial approach to retuning degraded land to production, with off-site catchment benefits provided by lowering water tables. The program successfully established over 500 trials across Australia and demonstrated the capacity to achieve commercial returns from degraded land.
-
Benefit to Client:
This program provided the technology transfer step to develop Saltgrow hybrids from an experimental outcome into a commercial product marketed to land owners and land management organisations around Australia.
- Market Sector: Renewable resources - agriculture, grazing and forestry
-
Capabilities:
- Irrigated forest & fodder crops for beneficial use of waste water
- Groundwater and salinity management
- Tree and crop improvement
- Location: NSW
- Year: 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006