Genetic survey of Pinus radiata. 9: General discussion and implications for genetic management

Various issues arose from the results of the large Pinus radiata D.Don provenance-progeny trial in Kaingaroa Forest which included all five natural populations and two local "land-race " controls. Differences between the five natural populations are multi-dimensional, the apparent affinities between populations depending strongly on the traits considered. Assigning any given tree in the species unequivocally to its appropriate population by means other than pedigree information is difficult, and at present would require data sets that would be hard to obtain. The local land-race control populations, Kaingaroa and Nelson, appear to have obtained about two-thirds and slightly over half of their genes, respectively, from Ano Nuevo and the rest from Monterey. The closer resemblance of Kaingaroa than Nelson to Ano Nuevo was very consistent, yet the resemblances of the controls to their progenitor populations evidently varied markedly among traits; it is suspected that local "land-race " stocks, while otherwise quite broadly based genetically, may reflect relatively large genetic contributions from a small number of Monterey ancestors in the original introductions