Developing breeding objectives for radiata pine structural wood production. I. Bioeconomic model and economic weights

Economic breeding objectives were developed for production of radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) structural timber in Australia. Production systems of eight companies, including plantation growers, sawmills, and integrated-system companies, were examined. A bioeconomic model linking the breeding-objective traits mean annual increment (MAI), stem sweep, average branch size, and modulus of elasticity (MoE) with production-system components was constructed using data obtained from industry and published sources. For a plantation grower the most important trait for improvement was MAI (31% improvement of net present value after a 10% trait improvement). For a sawmill the most important trait was MoE (29% improvement of profit after a 10% trait improvement). For an integrated-system company the two most important traits were MoE and MAI (24% and 21% improvement of net present value after a 10% trait improvement, respectively). There was a high correlation between breeding objectives of plantation growers within a region (rG > 0.99), but a negative correlation between breeding objectives of plantation growers and sawmills (rGS = –0.32) and only an intermediate correlation (rGI < 0.65) between those of growers and integrated-system companies.