Water deficit constrains the maximum productivity of forest plantations, even under optimal silvicultural practices and genetic selection. Breeding programs have used clonal genetic materials to enhance their drought resistance by identifying key plant mechanisms mediated by ecophysiological traits that confer resilience to water stress. We assessed how ecophysiological traits influence the biomass growth of Eucalyptus genetic materials with different levels of drought tolerance. We contrasted two genetic materials: highly productive Eucalyptus urophylla (A1) and drought-resistant Eucalyptus grandis × E. camaldulensis (C3). We analyzed 58 ecophysiological traits, categorized into six functional groups. We modeled biomass growth as a function of these traits using random forest regression models. Our results showed similar key drivers for both genetic materials, but with different responses depending on genotype. Biomass growth in A1 was primarily associated with leaf-related traits and water use, whereas biomass growth in C3 was linked to root-related ecophysiological traits and trade-offs between structural investment and growth. Overall, our findings provide actionable insights for Eucalyptus breeding programs by identifying ecophysiological functional traits that help distinguish the high-yielding and the drought-tolerant genetic materials evaluated in this study. Incorporating these traits into selection criteria can enhance the predictability and long-term performance of genetic materials under increasingly variable climatic conditions.
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Pereira et al. (2026) studied this question.