Variation in growth and survival among European provenances of Pinus sylvestris in a 30-year-old experiment

Provenance trials with forest trees provide valuable information about growth and adaptability of populations often transferred over large geographical and climatic distances. In this study we evaluated growth and survival of 19 Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) populations representing most of the natural range of the species in Europe, growing in a 30-year-old provenance trial in the northeastern Poland. We used cluster analysis to investigate differentiation among those populations in growth and survival. We also used published data on needle morphology and allozyme and DNA marker variation for those same populations to compare groupings of populations based on growth and needle traits and markers. We found significant variation among tested populations in all investigated traits – the largest variation was found for stand volume which integrates information on growth and survival. Variation in growth traits was related to the latitude of population origin with populations from the latitudinal band between 49° N and 54° N showing the best performance. Populations originating from both north and south off of that region showed lower productivity, which for southern provenances resulted from their particularly low survival, reflecting the lack of adaptation to the environment of the research site. Grouping of populations based on growth traits revealed three clusters corresponding to the three latitudinal regions – northern, central and southern. Needle morphological traits were not appropriate as markers of productivity. Clustering of populations based on needle morphology, and especially based on biochemical and molecular markers, did not correspond to the grouping based on growth traits.