Keynote Speakers


Monday 17 September 2018

What’s beyond wood fibre for eucalypt industrial plantations?

Nuno Manuel Goncalves Borralho, Raiz, Portugal

Nuno Borralho Photo

Nuno Borralho is since 2016 the head of the Forestry Research Unit of RAIZ, a research institute part of The Navigator Company in Portugal, dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge in eucalyptus plantations, in the areas of genetics and breeding, silviculture, pests and diseases and environment. He is also a Research Associate of the Centro de Estudos Florestais, a Research Unit of the Technical University of Lisboa.

A forester by training, he got his Phd on Eucalyptus Genetics by the Univ of Oxford, in 1991. He was lecturer in the University of Tasmania in the late 90s and has been working as a researcher on various eucalypt forest companies for most of the 00s. Before arriving at RAIZ in 2016, Nuno worked as a consultant, with several eucalyptus projects around the world, especially in the fields of Tree Genetics and Silvicultural, but also on the impact of R&D on the economics and sustainability of industrial plantations, mainly with eucalyptus but also extended to pines, teak and acacias, in both temperate and tropical countries.

Nuno has published over 60 research papers and Book Chapters and been a keen collaborator of the IUFRO 2.08.03 Working Party, for which he was a Chairperson for 8 years.

Although still closely involved with breeding and genetics of eucalyptus, current main research challenges include the development of effective mechanisms of technology transfer to small-scale forest producers and harvesting and transport networks, closing of the plantation-mill production cycles, mainly related with water, carbon and nutrients economy, and tools to enable a better understanding of the impacts of industrial plantations at a landscape level. 


Monday 17 September 2018

The production ecology of mixtures: From pattern to process to application

David Forrester, WSL, Birmensdorf Swiss

DavidForrester

David Forrester studies how silviculture affects forest functioning, in terms of light absorption, carbon, water and nutrient cycles. This work included several projects about species interactions in mixed-species plantations of Eucalyptus and Acacia. David is a senior researcher in the Stand dynamics and Silviculture group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. He studied forest science at the Australian National University (B.Sc in Forestry, 2000; PhD, 2004) and worked as a forest science researcher/lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia and at Freiburg University, Germany. He has coauthored over 70 journal articles, including nearly 40 about Eucalyptus plantations, and a book Mixed-Species Forests, Ecology and Management, which was written with H. Pretzsch and J. Bauhus.


Monday 17 September 2018

What causes the rapid development of eucalypt plantations and industries in China ? 

Yaojian Xie, Director of China Eucalyptus Research Centre, China

Xie Yaojian-1

Professor Yaojian Xie, the director of China Eucalypt Research Centre, is a famous scientist of eucalypt research in China. He has been the president of Sub-society of Eucalypt, Chinese Society of Forestry since 2005. Professor Xie got his M. Sc. (Forestry) in 1985 and PhD in 2008 at Central South Forestry and Technology University. He did 1 year visiting research at Upusala Genetic Center, the Swedish University of Agriculture in 1995 and worked 3 months as a visiting professor in Natal University, South Africa in 2003. His main research field focus on Eucalyptus clone breeding and micropropagation technology. Professor Xie lead many important national research projects since 1998 including the “10th-5-year-plan” project (2001-2005)—“Research on Breeding and Silviculture of Eucalyptus Plantations for Pulp Industry”, the “11th-5-year-plan” (2006-2010)—“Research on Silvicultural Technology of Eucalyptus and Acacia Plantations”, and the national key project in forestry (2011-2014)—“Research on Ecological Management of Eucalyptus plantation and Technological Promotion of Eucalyptus Industry”. He has published more than 100 papers and 6 books. He was awarded 3 provincial scientific progress prizes, 2 ministry prizes (Liang Xi Forestry Research Prize) and 1 national scientific progress prize from 2003 to 2016. Prof. Xie was the secretary-general and vice chairman of the organizing committee of “IUFRO Eucalypt Conference 2015”, which held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China in October 21-24, 2015. 


Monday 17 September 2018

Forest outgrower programs in small and medium-sized producers in Brazil

José Leonardo de Moraes Gonçalves, ESALQ, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Foto Leonardo

José Leonardo de Moraes Gonçalves is a professor of Forest Soils and Nutrition in the department of Forest Sciences at the "Luiz de Queiroz" College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo. He has undertaken extensive research on soil fertility, site preparation, and plant nutrition, focusing on the tropical and subtropical eucalypt and pine plantations. They have been applied for genotypic adaptation and phenotypic acclimatization of plantations in regions with high water, thermal and nutritional stresses, and how to manage the ecosystem for sustained production of wood and non-wood values from planted forests. Aiming at long-term forest sustainability, it was a pioneer in research with minimum soil cultivation in the early nineties. He is the scientific coordinator of the Cooperative Research Program of Forestry and Management at the Institute of Forest Research and Study, which brings together producers and forestry companies with more than 3.5 million hectares of eucalypt and pine plantations. In the last thirty years he has accompanied and provided scientific and technological knowledge used in forest outgrower programs in small and medium-sized producers in Brazil. He has edited three books and published more than one hundred scientific articles in journals of wide dissemination and international impact. He directed the training of 23 masters, 22 doctors and 4 post-doctorates.


Monday 17 September 2018

Strategy to reduce fire risks in eucalypt plantations

Paulo Fernandes,CITAB,UTAD,  Portugal

Paulo Fernandes

Paulo Fernandes is affiliated with the Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences Research and Technology Centre (CITAB) of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), Portugal, where he holds an Associate Professor position and received his Ph.D. in Forest Science (2003). His scientific contributions have been on the behaviour and ecology of wildland fire from a forest management perspective, mainly in topics of fuel characterization and field-based assessment and modelling of fire characteristics and effects, and result from participating (since 1992) in respectively 12 and 22 international and national R&D projects. Such work has often been carried out in the frame of prescribed burning for hazard reduction, namely in Mediterranean shrubland and pine forests and, more recently, in eucalypt plantations. Current interests include also the drivers of fire regimes and large fires. He has co-authored about 200 publications, including 89 peer-reviewed papers in journals. Paulo serves in the editorial boards of the International Journal of Wildland Fire and Annals of Forest Science, and in the board of directors of the International Association of Wildland Fire and supervisory board of the Pau Costa Foundation for Fire Ecology and Management. Paulo is regularly involved in prescribed fire training and cooperation with government agencies and forest companies in fire management matters


Monday 17 September 2018

Dealing with genotype x environment interactions in Eucalyptus forest companies

Jose Luiz Stape, University of Sao Paulo,  Suzano Pulp and Paper Company

 

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Jose Luiz Stape is a permanent professor of Ecophysiology of Forest Plantations in the Forestry Departments of University of Sao Paulo and Sao Paulo State University, Brazil. He is also the head of the Forest Technology Department in Suzano Pulp & Paper Company, which has Eucalyptus plantations from 2oN to 24oS requiring detailed evaluation of the genotype x environment interactions. Stape has worked in Brazil, in the US (North Carolina State University) across many countries and companies, always looking to improve silvicultural recommendations for the sustainability of forest plantations including:  clonal deployment, site-preparation, nutrition and spacing. To better evaluate the factors limiting forest productivity and controlling C allocation, he coordinated the establishment, with other scientists, of three large Eucalyptus cooperative research programs in Brazil (BEPP, Eucflux and TECHS). These efforts addressed and answered scientific questions regarding genetic, climate and management effects on the growth and use of natural resources by Eucalyptus. More than 80 journal articles contains some of these results. Nowadays interests include the integration of environmental and genomic data into breeding, protection, wood quality and clonal deployment planning.


Tuesday 18 September 2018

Forestry and wood production for rural development and poverty reduction: it is time to move on from romanticism and failed hopes to reality.

Sadanandan Nambiar, Hon. Fellow at CSIRO, Canberra Australia

SN FSC 2017

Sadanandan Nambiar is a Hon. Fellow in CSIRO. He  was Chief Research Scientist and Science Director of the former CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, Australia. His  contributions include (i) leading research advancing sustainable forest management, especially plantation forests for economic development and community benefits, and science based policy development in Australia, (ii) supporting forest science and application in a number of temperate and tropical countries (iii) fostering major national and international collaborations strengthening  public and private institutions, and (iv) mentoring young scientists. He is actively engaged in promoting forestry for rural economic development and poverty alleviation in Asia. Sadanandan’s awards include the prestigious N W Jolly Medal from Australia, IUFRO Host Scientific Award, Distinguished lectureship (SSSA, USA), Medal of Excellence from Commonwealth Forestry Association ( UK/Australia) and Medal from Vietnam. He was given   the   national honour-Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).  


Tuesday 18 September 2018

Advances in remote sensing: potential to gain insight into the ecosystem services of eucalypt plantations

Guerric le Maire, UMR Eco&Sols of CIRAD, Jaguariúna Brazil

guerric

Guerric le Maire works on remote sensing of forest, in close relation with carbon and water budget modelling. His works concern the classification and estimation of forest characteristics from satellite images, such as leaf area index, chlorophyll content or biomass, with many applications on eucalypt plantations. Guerric has a diploma from AgroParisTech (French Higher Educational Institution), a M. Sc in Ecology, a PhD in Ecophysiology. He is researcher at CIRAD (Eco&Sols Joint unit, Montpellier, France), and is currently Visiting Professor at UNICAMP (University of Campinas, Brazil) where he develops projects related with monitoring of eucalypt plantations at regional scale. He has published more than 60 papers in the field of remote sensing or process- based forest modelling.


Wednesday 19 September 2018

Insights from genomic studies to predict the effects of abiotic stresses on wood properties

Jacqueline Grima Pettenati, CNRS, Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France

photo Jacqueline GP

Jacqueline Grima Pettenati is a CNRS Research director and group leader of the “Eucalyptus functional genomics” team at the Plant Science Research laboratory (www.lrsv.ups-tlse.fr/?-Genomique-fonctionnelle-de-l-). She spent one year as invited professor in 2004-2005 at Laval University, Forestry department (Quebec, Canada). She has a strong expertise in lignin biosynthesis, engineering and regulation. She has published 88 peer-reviewed publications in international Journals (H index: 37, 4209 citations), 22 book chapters or conferences papers, 55 conferences in international meetings. Her team is among the leaders in Eucalyptus genomics, generated many transcriptomic data and participated to the annotation of the E. grandis genome (Myburg et al. 2014).  The team’s researches are oriented towards the improvement of wood quality and production for industrial applications as well as the resilience of the Eucalyptus trees to environmental cues. She has long standing collaborations with tree breeders and wood end-users in France and in Europe as well as a strong expertise in coordinating multidisciplinary projects et the European level. 


Wednesday 19 Septembre 2018

Abiotic stresses: where ecophysiology meets management 

Dan Binkley, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Keynote Dan Binkley

Dan Binkley has worked on forest productivity and nutrient cycling, blending applied and basic.  Some of the applied perspectives have focused on sustaining the productivity of forests by sustaining soil fertility, providing useful information in textbooks and courses for people who manage forests, and working with collaborative citizen groups on forest restoration at landscape scales.  Dan has degrees from Northern Arizona University (B.S. in Forestry), University of British Columbia (M.Sc. Forest Ecology), Oregon State University (PhD Forest Ecology, Soils, Botany), and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (honorary doctorate).  He was a professor of forest ecology and soils at Duke University and Colorado State University for 35 years.  He has coauthored over 160 journal articles (>40 on Eucalyptus plantations in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Brazil) and several books (including The Ecology and Management of Forest Soils (with R.F. Fisher).   He is finishing his 10th and final year as an Editor-in-Chief of the journal Forest Ecology and Management.


Thursday 20 September 2018

How resilient is primary metabolism of eucalypt trees to external supplies of nutrients and changing climates?

Mark Adams, University of Sydney, Australia

mark this month

Mark Adams is currently Professor of BioScience and Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, and is an Honorary Professor at The University of Sydney.  He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment at USYD and has held Professorial appointments at the Universities of Melbourne, Western Australia and New South Wales, as well as a range of fellowships in Australia, France, NZ and Germany.  He served as a Trustee for the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, as a member of the Board of the Bushfire CRC.

Working with collaborators, with financial support from the Australian Research Council and industry, Mark and his research group are focused on the biogeochemistry and sustainability of forest and food production systems.  They publish widely as a result of their studies in natural and managed ecosystems.

Current interests include water use efficiency and carbon and nitrogen metabolism in native and agricultural plants. A passionate believer in “conservation through use”, Mark enjoys working with postgraduate students and with people who live on and work the land.

A lifelong interest in the ecology and physiology of eucalypts and acacias remains a central theme in Mark’s research.


Thursday 20 September 2018

Towards landscape genomics for genetic resource management and molecular breeding of commercially grown Eucalyptus species and hybrids

Zander Myburg, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Zander Myburg is a Professor in Genetics and the Director of the Forest Molecular Genetics (FMG) Programme in the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI) at the University of Pretoria (UP). He also holds the Chair in Forest Genomics and Biotechnology at UP. His research team has pioneered the use of population genomics and systems genetics approaches to unravel the genetic control of growth and wood formation in Eucalyptus trees. His research has focused on the genetic dissection of wood cell wall chemistry in Eucalyptus. He also was the lead investigator of the US Department of Energy (DOE) funded international Eucalyptus Genome Project which generated the reference genome sequence for the genus (Myburg et al. 2014, Nature). His team is using genomics information to develop biotechnology applications for tree improvement with South African forestry companies including DNA fingerprinting, genome-assisted breeding approaches and genetic engineering towards enhancing tree growth and development for pulp, paper, timber and other bioeconomy applications. He has supervised 58 postgraduate (postdoc, MSc and PhD) students and is author of 94 ISI peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in the field of plant molecular genetics and genomics. 


Friday 21 September 2018

Eucalyptus pests: Expanding frontiers

Mike Wingfield, Director of FABI, South Africa 

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Michael (Mike) Wingfield, Director of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI) has conducted research on tree pests and pathogens, especially concerning their global movement for more than thirty years. Specifically regarding Eucalyptus, he has studied pests of these trees in many countries of the world, with a particular focus on providing options to reduce their impact. He has published widely on the topic of tree health in more than 800 research papers and seven books. During his academic career, he has advised more than 80 Ph.D. students and presented many invited lectures globally. He serves/ has severed in many prestigious positions and has received numerous awards including honorary doctorates from the University of British Colombia, Canada (2012) and North Carolina State University (2013) and the highest scientific award (Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Award) of the African Union in 2013. He is currently serving a five-year term as the President of the International Union of Forestry Research Organisations (IUFRO), the oldest international scientific organisation representing more than 15 000 forestry scientists globally. http://www.fabinet.up.ac.za/mwingfield