ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Breeding
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1544491
This article is part of the Research TopicBreeding Approaches to Improve Woody Plants’ Resistance to Pests and DiseasesView all 10 articles
Acacia koa seedling disease tolerance and vigor driven by breeding orchard size
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, ‘Aiea, United States
- 2University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
- 3Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
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Acacia koa Gray (koa) is a Hawaiian endemic tree species that has a long history of use in the islands. In the late 20th century disease started impacting native koa stands, leading to the initiation of seed orchards that were founded from seeds collected across the islands. Large improvements in disease tolerance and vigor were achieved in very few cycles of selection despite the long temporal time of this perennial hardwood tree species. Initial selection on agronomic and domestication traits improved populations to the agricultural and natural ecosystem. Further, using simulation we identified how different methods of selection could be implemented to more rapidly make progress toward improved koa germplasm. Our evidence shows that domestication in Acacia koa provides a model for parametrization of crossing in the breeding cycle for rapid improvement of any tree species.
Keywords: tree breeding, Sequential thinning, Recurrent selection, Fusarium oxysporum, Stochastic simulation
Received: 12 Dec 2024; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fumia, Dudley, Jones, Dobbs, Stewart and Kantar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nathan Fumia, Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, ‘Aiea, United States
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