Due to the growing concern of spreading transgenic pollen and seeds from plantations of genetically modified trees, there is a pressing need for technologies that create non-flowering trees.

At the same time, there is also considerable interest in technologies that create early flowering trees for breeding purposes. Traditional breeding has progressed extremely slowly in forestry with most forest trees taking 10-20 years to flower for the first time.

With our Gene Discovery Platform we have identified several genes which are key to the control of flowering. We are performing successful research in order to provide the forest industry with:

• A technology base for the prevention of flowering and the generation of sterile transgenic trees
  
• A highly efficient breeding tool that can create fast flowering trees and marker assisted breeding to accelerate hardwood, spruce and pine breeding