A Success Story in Eucalyptus Clonal forestry

Large scale seedling origin Eucalyptus plantations were taken up in Nellore region of the Andhra Pradesh Forest Development Corporation. The productivity from the same non-uniform plantations has fluctuated around 10 MT/ha. To boost the production per ha for optimum land utilisation, Eucalyptus clones were.initially purchased from lTC, Bhadrachalam and tested in different agro.climatic areas of the region. Mter seeing the success of the clones in the CTAs, large scale clonal plantations were taken up with those clones, which performed well in those sites. Seventeen mist chambers were erected for production of all such tested clones. Production of the clones for planting and for selling to the farmers started in large scale in 1998. Intensive site preparation of the degraded forest areas using bulldozers and rippers were taken up for better soil and moisture conservation. New Plus trees were selected from the existing seed origin plantations, which were of seven years of age, and the coppice shoots were taken from the Plus trees for testing them in CTAs. Large scale CMAs (Clonal Multiplication Areas) were established to boost up the production in Mist Chamber. It is hoped that all these measures will boost the per ha yield of pulpwood and will establish clonal plantations having uniform growth.