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Forests look mounting pressures from clime variability, invasive species, land-use alteration and fragmentation and addressing them calls for sustained interdisciplinary probe connected wood dynamics, familial diversity, ecosystem functioning and resilience to enactment adaptive absorption and informed argumentation decisions, said Kanchan Devi, Director General of Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) successful Coimbatore connected Wednesday.
Addressing these analyzable and urgent challenges requires enactment that is systematic, evidence-driven and outcome-oriented, said Ms. Devi aft inaugurating a three-day planetary league connected colonisation and conservation genetics.
“India’s forests screen astir one-fourth of our land. They signifier a affluent mosaic of earthy forests, plantations, and agroforestry systems. These landscapes are biologically bonzer — precocious successful taxon diversity, endemism, and functional complexity. Many autumn wrong globally recognised biodiversity hotspots and are progressively susceptible to clime alteration and anthropogenic pressures. This makes our stewardship a responsibility, not conscionable national, but global,” she said.
Ms. Devi highlighted that ICFRE conducted extended clonal and progeny trials crossed divers agro-climatic zones for taxon specified arsenic teak, neem, eucalyptus, casuarina, gmelina, melia and tamarind. These trials produced improved clones and germplasm that heighten growth, wood quality, and resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses.
The league is organised by Unit 2.04.01 (Population, Ecological and Conservation Genetics) of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the Asia-Pacific Forest Genetic Resources Programme (APFORGEN) and hosted by ICFRE – Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB).
According to IFGTB, the league volition absorption connected knowing colonisation dynamics, adaptive familial diverseness and evolutionary processes of wood histrion species, which are captious for predicting semipermanent endurance and designing effectual conservation and restoration strategies.
T. Rabikumar, Director, IFGTB; Rekha Warrier, Chair, Asia-Pacific Forest Genetic Resources Programme, Fillipos Aravanapoulos, Coordinator, IUFRO; and Modhumita Dasgupta, organising caput of the conference, spoke.
