Araucaria Research and Development 1965 to the end of 1975

limited success. The boundaries / limitations of this work will be discussed for the period 1965 to 1975 towards the end of this section.

Up to the time I arrived in Bulolo, the araucaria tree improvement program had learnt a lot, but it was having some problems which must be outlined to appreciate the success and limitations of Clifford’s work.

Staff were trained in Australia. On return they started to practice the new skill of grafting. By 1965 they had established several clone banks of mostly hoop pine grafts and two klinkii pine area. One close to No 1 Station staff accommodation compound and the second at Inakanda LA. For hoop pine a somewhat larger block in the same area as the first klinkii grafting and a larger in Long Island LA. All were grafts made on pre-planted grafting stock meant for commercial plantation. Problems they faced included • Insufficient grafting bud wood material • Low success rates with ramet establishment • Time to recover from grafting losses to be able to make enough replacement clones to source their budwood material • Accessible plantation areas The strategy was to establish several clone banks to build enough representative clones to get the first large clonal orchard. Pressure was placed on the team to sue the 1965/66 hoop pine planting. The problem here was that the amount of grafting material removed from each ramet by decapitation of the apical leader and the failure to get only one or two successful grafts to survive and grow, meant that it would be two more years before grafting material could be reproduced for use again. This meant that forestry would be needing seed from natural stands for a long time. To me it seemed that any attempt to maintain the genetic integrity of the Bulolo gene pool would be impossible. In the future we would have to seek better genetic material from other provenances. We had not reached the stage yet to just research this avenue of development and genetic resource development. Problems of pollen supply; clone banks; introduction of grafted plagiotrophic branch material onto stock existed.

Araucaria Research and Development from 1965 to the end of 1975

Mr Barry Gray arrived at Bulolo as OIC research and head of the entomological section. He invited me to join Research. I thought I was already in Research Under Mr John Smith re Pinus Grassland afforestation work. Other people came as Dr Franz Arentz and Mr Jack Simpson to start a pathology section and Dr John Davidson in Silviculture. At this stage, my duties started to diversify. From the plantation species I had teak and with Dr Davidson I became involved with his world of tree breeding Eucalyptus deglupta (Kamarere) so I could not complain about a boring job. With all these people I found my working life rich in diversity, which meant I had other facets of my silviculture life to consider, learn and to help others. Finally, there was the entomology side and that was part of my private life as I collected beetles and butterflies when I was in Australia. As I was to learn, the forest was full of insect pests, a more serious side of entomology as I had already seen with the weevils and white ant Coptotermes elisae on our trees.

Gray’s attention was drawn to: