Ensuring forests for our future requires research in forest genetics to identify and enhance important genetic traits, such as growth rate and form, disease and insect resistance, and adaptive plasticity. Breeding and developing new tree varieties and hybrids are also major components of ongoing research.

In addition to these concerns, forests geneticists probe more theoretical questions, such as the effects and causes of genetic instability in tissue culture, quantification of gene flow between species, the mode of inheritance and organization of organelle genomes, and the use of molecular techniques to increase breeding efficiency.

As a graduate student in the forest genetics program at MSU you create your own program of study. You may choose to study any aspect of forest genetics from conventional quantitative breeding to organelle genetics or the molecular basis of gene expression. Recent graduate student research has examined genotypic enhancement of in vitro performance for tissue culture, the inheritance of cpDNA and mtDNA in the genus Picea, and the expression of novel genes in transgenic woody plants.