Insect and vertebrate herbivores represent an important cost to eucalypt forestry. Our work aims assess the potential for breeding resistant trees in order to improve the viability of plantations especially in farm forestry.

Eucalyptus plantations are seen as an important part of efforts to reduce dependence on native forests. Insect and mammals can cause significant damage to both seedlings and saplings and given the wide variation in the susceptibility of trees to herbivores, we have been interested in whether this natural resistance can be used to reduce losses to herbivores. The first steps are identifying the chemical traits involved and studying their heritability and genetic correlations with other beneficial traits.

Papers from this work

• Wallis IR, Henery ML, Henson M, Foley WJ (2010) Foliar chemistry of juvenile Eucalyptus grandis clones does not predict chemical defence in maturing ramets. Forest Ecology and Management 260: 763–769 (PDF, 228 KB)
• Henery, ML, Henson, M, Wallis IR, Stone C, Foley WJ (2008) Predicting canopy defoliation of Eucalyptus grandis by Paropsis atomaria with direct and indirect measures of leaf composition. Forest Ecology and Management 255:3642-3651 (PDF, 402 KB)
• Henery, ML, Wallis IR, Stone C, Foley WJ (2008) Methyl jasmonate does not induce changes in Eucalyptus grandis leaves that alter the effect of constitutive defnces on larvae of a specialist herbivore. Oecologia 156: 847-859
• Andrew RL, Wallis IR, Harwood CE, Henson M, Foley WJ (2007) Heritable variation in the foliar secondary metabolite sideroxylonal confers cross-resistance in Eucalyptus. Oecologia 153:901-911 (PDF, 246 KB).