This six-part manual is an introduction of forest nursery practices for South African growers. It is illustrated with photographs and diagrams.
Chapter 1, gives a short introduction to the genera Eucalyptus, Pinus, Podocarpus and Acacia, and includes a brief description, origins, habitats and uses of each.
Chapter 2, titled ‘Nursery management in pictures’, consists of an illustrated guide to nursery management under the main headings of: Container seedling nursery, Production of bare root seedlings, Production of cuttings and Micropropagation.
Chapter 3, ‘Seedling production’, describes methods of seed handling and storage and the maintenance of seedlings, and gives details pertinent to each of the four genera.
Chapters 4 and 5, deal with vegetative propagation of Eucalyptus, Pinus, and Podocarpus species by means of cuttings and grafting, respectively. Propagation through cuttings is a way of obtaining a new plant from vegetative parts of the original plant, and grafting is the technique of joining two parts of different plants in such a way that they will unite and continue their growth as one plant. The principles of grafting, grafting procedure, grafting techniques, graft incompatibility and the maintenance of grafted plants are discussed.
It is critically important to keep accurate records of every aspect of the nursery's operation. Chapter 6 describes record keeping for nursery operations, and discusses different types of records in detail, namely sowing records, clone identity and family records, expenditure records, sales records and stock control records.
The three appendices give useful additional information. Appendix A discusses the Australian pine cutting system, a strategy developed by the Queensland Forest Service involving open-root cuttings and container cuttings for the production of F1 cuttings from the hybrid Pinus elliotii x P. caribaea. Appendix B discusses the care and handling of micropropagated plants, which is a propagation technique using tissue culture. Appendix C gives a photographic sequence demonstrating the production of pine and eucalyptus grafts.
Paper copies can also be supplied on request.
Contact: Karen Eatwell, Tel: +27 12 841 2007
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