PosterShort Rotation willow Coppice (SRC) is an important source of biomass energy in Ireland. Growing and intensively managing trees at wide spacing generates high value timber, sequesters carbon and delivers other ecosystem services. The alley coppice system combines the production of SRC with high value timber trees. Three alley coppice experiments were established to study the interaction of SRC with high value timber trees. In Experiment 1 the cherry variety - willow interaction is investigated: 5 willow varieties (and a mixture of all 5); (‘Resolution’, ‘Beagle’, ‘Endeavour’, ‘Olaf’ and ‘Terra Nova’) interact with rows of clonal wild cherry: ‘Neso’, ‘Pluto’, ‘Saturn’, ‘Hermes’ and ‘Concordia’ and one control of seedlings. The willow is planted in double rows 0.75m by 1.5m apart. Cherry trees are planted at an intra-row tree to tree spacing of 2.5m and inter-row spacing of 12.75m and alley widths of 1m & 2 m. In Experiment 2, 18 year old poplars (‘Hoogwoorst’, ‘Beaupre’, ‘Gebec’ ‘Trichobel’) are 5m apart in 14m wide alleys, planted with each of the 7 willow varieties (6 monoculture – as above in Experiment 1 but including ‘Tora’ & one mixed willow treatment simulating commercial planting). In Experiment 3, cherry are inter-planted along an existing commercial SRC as single tree plots in a linear randomised design. Cherry trees are 2.5m apart in rows; each is 2.5 m from nearest willow stool. Each block contains 5 sub plots. Each sub plot contains 26 tree genotypes: 22 German varieties, 2 French varieties and seedlings as controls. For each experiment the growth and yield of the tree and SRC components and their interactions will be measured and evaluated
