Genetic and silvicultural analyses to determine the region of origin, the growth and quality features of red oak (Quercus rubra) stands in Germany. (06/2016 – 05/2020)

The Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra) was among first American oak species imported to Europe and is today one of the most important foreign tree species in Germany. Despite the grown importance since its introduction, many stands in Germany are of unknown origin. In order to make recommendations which stands are more suitable for the future harvest of seeding material, this project aims to examine a possible link between the origin, the growth and the stem quality of red oak stands. This project is thus divided in two parts: (1) The determination of the origin of selected red oak stands in Germany by analysing the genetic variation and (2) the assignment of ecological and phenotypic attributes to the identified provenance. Here we will focus on examining the genetic variation and geographic origin of our sampled stands: analyses of nuclear- and chloroplast- encoded microsatellite markers (SSRs), amplicon-sequencing of the chloroplast DNA, SNP- (“single nucleotide polymorphism”) and Indel- (Insertion/Deletion) analyses. Finally, based on the obtained chloroplast DNA-sequences, we attempt to develop PCR-RFLP markers to achieve a higher throughput. So far the relationship between origin, growth and quality features of Northern Red Oak has rarely been analysed.