News

Since the summer all data from all seven core species have been completed and the collaborative analyses have started since. With teams from Finland, Spain, France, UK, Switzerland, Germany… the Slack channels are heating up. After the denovo SNP calling we have now turned to call SNPs against the respective reference genomes. Luckily we have decent genomes for oak, beech, birch, and poplar, as well as usable references for the conifers so that we will end up with several hundred thousands to millions of SNPs for each species. Also all phenotyping data has been curated and association studies have started as has machine learning modeling. First results are very promising. The first publications - our so-called data papers - have been submitted.

Background

GenTree is a H2020 funded collaborative research project that started in 2016. The goal of GenTree is to provide the European forestry sector with better knowledge, methods and tools for optimising the management and sustainable use of forest genetic resources (FGR) in Europe in the context of climate change and continuously evolving demands for forest products and services. My group is mostly involved in workpackages 1, 3 and 4 - so dealing with the genomic and phenotypic analyses of in total 12 important forest tree species. Most of all we are interested in Beech, Oak, Poplar, Spruce and Silver Fir.

Participating group members

• Dr. Isabelle Lesur (bioinformatics)
• Dr. Martin Leberecht (sensor based phenotyping)
• MSc Sebastian Richter (uav based phenotyping and environmental characterization)

Co-workers

• Dr. Katrin Heer (UMR)
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Nauss (UMR)
• Dr. Sascha Liepelt (UMR)
• Dr. Christoph Reudenbach (UMR)
• Dr. Felix Gugerli (WSL)
• Dr. Christian Rellstab (WSL)
• Dr. Benjamin Dauphin (WSL)
• Dr. Patrick Fonti (WSL)
• Dr. Elisabeth Martinez (WSL)

Collaboration partners and Institutions

INRA Avignon

• Dr. Bruno Fady
• Dr. Ivan Scotti

INRA Bordeaux

• Prof. Dr. Christophe Plomion

INRA Orleans

• Dr. Phillippe Rozenberg

University of Oulu

• Dr. Tanja Pyhäjärvi

Uppsala University

• Prof. Dr. Martin Lascoux

CNR Florence

• Dr. Giovanni Guiseppe Vendramin