As times goes by, most of trees wear different color of leaves. Some trees bear delicious fruit and others bloom by changing seasons. However, there is well known trees for keeping same color for four seasons. The name is "Pine Tree". These trees mostly raised in the commercial purpose in Brazil. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to join a Program called "Potential productivity of the Pine in Brazil"(PPPIB) to research of them.

The pine trees are consisted of 105 species and their product including woods has high economic value. In particular, they have an effect on ecosystems and offer food and habitats for animals. These trees have planted in many countries including Brazil, mainly South and Southeast regions. They have cultivated for over 30 years and currently account for 2 million hectares as commercial pine plantation.

There are a couple of reasons why pines have a large population in the world.

- The large number of species pine enables to adapt the various environmental conditions.

- Pines can endure and are able to grow in dry, poor nutrition of soils.

- They can be flourished in many kinds of sites.

The organization of this program is "The Forest Science and Research Institute", which was built in 1968 and non-profit organization in Brazil. It aims at planning actions, managing resource, researches in natural resource and focusing on forest science. They have offered the quality of techniques for improvement of forest.

We participated in this program to achieve the goal following lists below.

 

- We checked the resources such as light, water and nutrients to check the potential productivity and efficiency.

- We estimate how much water and nutrition influences the amount of carbon in trees.

- We analyze the way in which arrange the various structures can be more productive.

- The some factors such as genetic, climate etc would affect on the amount of Photosynthetic rate.

 

To measure those figures, we walked whole day from 7am to 5pm in commercial forest. As people know, this kind of forests does not have biodiversity. Therefore, whenever we found some animals such as deer, we were so excited. Most of trees had similar genetic condition but it was our duty to figure out exact data of them to produce better quality of trees.

The program I joined initiated in 2006 to enhance knowledge of Pine cultivation. 7 companies are currently involved in here and consisted of North Carolina University (Raleigh, USA) and Universidade de São Paulo itself, with its experimental station in Itatinga, SP.

We are supposed to wear the special boots in case the dangerous snake might bite us. With this heavy boots, leg rubber protection and helmets, it was too difficult to walk around the forests for long time. However, the beauty nature has and meaningful work I have made me encourage to progress step by step.

Source: SCIELO/ IPEF