Gunulf, Anna
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2013Peer reviewed
Secondary spread of Heterobasidion parviporum from small Norway spruce stumps to adjacent trees
Gunulf, Anna; Wang, Liying; Englund, Jan-Eric; Rönnberg, Jonas
Abstract
Root and butt rot from Heterobasidion parviporum on Norway spruce causes severe economic losses in northern Europe and stumps from commercial thinnings are regularly treated to prevent infection. Stumps created at precommercial thinnings are, due to their small size, believed to be unable to transfer the disease. The aims of this study were to investigate the ability of small-sized Norway spruce stumps to transfer infection to neighboring trees and to determine the lower size and age limit for disease transmission. Norway spruce trees, with diameters between 2 and 14 cm at stump height, were felled at 14 sites in western Sweden. The resulting stumps were inoculated with H. parviporum and disease transfer recorded at stump height in the adjacent Norway spruce trees 5 years later. Stumps covering the whole span of investigated sizes and ages could transfer infection of H. parviporum and consequently a lower limit under which transfer never occurred could not be determined. The probability of finding an inoculated infection in a tree increased with increasing diameter of both tree and stump. For a given stump size, the probability of infection in the nearby tree decreased with increasing age of the stump. It seems prudent to consider the risk of introducing H. parviporum during precommercial thinning in Norway spruce dominated stands. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Heterobasidion parviporum; Picea abies; Precommercial thinning; Secondary spread
Published in
Forest Ecology and Management
2013, volume: 287, pages: 1-8
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
SLU Authors
Wang, Liying
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Englund, Jan-Eric
- Department of Biosystems and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Department of Biosystems and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Rönnberg, Jonas
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Associated SLU-program
SLU Future Forests
UKÄ Subject classification
Forest Science
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2012.09.011
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/60334