Forest industry policymakers and researchers can now revolutionize how they manage the multi-billion-dollar spruce-tree forest sector, thanks to new genome maps for the White spruce and Norway spruce developed by scientists at Simon Fraser University and elsewhere.

Steven Jones, a molecular biology and biochemistry professor, and Inanc Birol, a computing science adjunct professor, belong to a group of Canadian scientists who have mapped the White spruce genome.

White Spruce, a species of conifer, supplies a large proportion of the raw materials for the Canadian forest industry. In 2011, its harvest injected $23.7 billion into Canada’s economy.

Using the new genomic maps, scientists will be able to shrink the spruces’ breeding cycle from 25 years to as few as five, paving the way for more frequent harvests and a more competitive industry.

Scientists can also use the maps to develop innovative tree-breeding tools, and address economically and ecologically important targets such as adaptation to climate change.

“Say you want to combine the traits of a tree being drought resistant and insect pest resistant,” says Jones, senior author of the White spruce genome study. “Now, we can use a genetic test to tell if a tree has inherited both traits, where before we had to wait until trees were a few years old to evaluate their traits.”

Using the genomic maps to identify trees that are likely to be drought resistant will also be helpful in responding to climate change, adds Jones, since they can be planted in areas where rainfall levels are predicted to decrease

Birol, lead scientist of the White spruce genome assembly, adds: “Many projects are now attempting to decipher genomes of economically important plants. We have demonstrated a superior and less expensive method to do the job.”

The White spruce genome, published in Bioinformatics, and the Norway spruce genome, published in Nature, are the largest genome sequence assemblies to date. They have 20 to 30 billion base-pairs and are up to 10 times larger than the human genome.

Jones and Birol are also scientists at UBC and the Genome Sciences Centre at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, which is a key partner and funder in this research.