Screening clonally replicated Acacia mangium breeding populations for tolerance to Ceratocystis canker and wilt disease

Three screening trials of clonally replicated Acacia mangium seedlings were evaluated for survival and lesion length following inoculation with locally collected strains of Ceratocystis in Indonesia. Tolerance in the population was low with 6.7 of the 1033 clones represented by more than 4 ramets surviving repeated inoculations. Differences in tolerance among populations were slight; however, populations with consistently higher survival and shorter lesion lengths were from Papua New Guinea rather than Queensland. Estimates of the proportion of the experimental variation attributable to differences among parents (heritability) were low to moderate for both survival and lesion length. Estimates of the proportion of the experimental variation that was attributable to differences among clones (repeatability) were greater but typically similar to the heritability estimates, indicating that initial improvements from selection will primarily be derived from identifying tolerant parents. While genetic correlations among experiments were positive, estimates could not exclude the existence of host–pathogen interactions. Two validation trials of the tolerant clones were assessed 9 months after establishment; these trials verified that one-third of the clones identified in the nursery screening were also tolerant to Ceratocystis in field trials. The experiments confirmed that nursery screening may be used to quickly focus efforts on parents that produce more tolerant progeny, screening additional seedlings to increase selection intensity rather than using clonal replication to increase accuracy would lead to greater improvements in tolerance and field trials are required to verify disease tolerance at later ages. © 2022, The Author(s)