Evaluation of Different Clones of Eucalyptus in Punjab

The dependence of human population as well as livestock on forests all over the world to meet the requirements led to degradation of forests, natural resources and depletion of floral/ faunal diversity. The degradation of forests threatens the ecology and has resulted in climate change. India's forests have very low growing stock 65 m³/ha compared to world average of 110 m³/ha. Similarly mean annual increment is also very low 0.5 m³/ha/year compared to world average 2.1 m³/ha/year. Therefore it is needed to improve the productivity of forest resources and plantations by planting of high yielding species or clones to meet the forest based growing needs of the inhabitants. Eucalyptus and Poplar have been widely grown in Punjab either under agroforestry or as block plantations. Generally Eucalyptus is raised through seed that brings lot of variation. The eucalypts, a fast growing species and widely adopted in Punjab has tremendous scope for raising through clonal technology to keep it true to type and maintain its superiority. Keeping this objective, clonal research and demonstration plot was planted at a spacing of 4 × 2 m with 36 clones and seedling source as control at Semi (Jallandhar, Punjab) during August 2001. The clonal material is derived from E. tereticornis, E. camaldulensis and E. hybrid. The periodical data on diameter at breast height (d.b.h), height and volume was recorded. The most productive clones (2070, 285, 316, 288, 498, 286 and 2045) in clonal testing area (CTA-1) were ranging with m.a.i. from 24 to 30 m³/ha/year at 4 years age. The clones (601, 2029, 2054, 2152 and 2011) suffered heavy damage by wind in this experiment. The most productive clones (413, 407, 285, 290, 105 and 72) in CTA-2 were ranging with m.a.i. 30 - 36 m³/ ha/year at 4 years age. The clones 285 and 290 suffered crown damage heavily during winter where as 271, 272 and 315 led to low productivity due to wind damage. The clone 413 performed significantly superior among all other clones at 4 years of age. The present study revealed that clones 2070, 316, 288, 413 and 407 can be considered for plantations under Punjab conditions. However, new 42 CPTs have also been selected by Punjab State Forest Department from their old plantations of Eucalyptus to improve gene bank for future multiplication of promising clones.