Modern Strategies to Assess and Breed Forest Tree Adaptation to Changing Climate.

Studying the genetics of adaptation to new environments in ecologically and industrially important tree species is currently a major research line in the fields of plant science and genetic improvement for tolerance to abiotic stress. Specifically, exploring the genomic basis of local adaptation is imperative for assessing the conditions under which trees will successfully adapt to global climate change. However, this knowledge has scarcely been used in conservation and forest tree improvement because woody perennials face major research limitations such as their outcrossing reproductive systems, long juvenile phase, and huge genome sizes.