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Conversations on Reforestation, Silviculture, Tree Genetics, Planting, Planning and More! Join us as we go deep with forestry experts and explore the art and science of trees.
Paul Jeffreys (00:05)
Hello, and I'd like to welcome everybody to episode 16 of the ArborGen TreeLines podcast. And today we're going to be diving into everything seedling quality and ArborGen's SQA program or seedling quality assurance program. And at ArborGen, we want to supply you with the best seedling, not only with the best genetics, but also the best quality seedling that you can buy.
and quality you can count on. So today we're going to dive into that and we're going to talk about how ArborGen ensures every seedling delivers. And our guest today is Patrick Cumbie. Dr. Cumbie is our VP of product development at ArborGen and also Colin Jackson. he, Dr. Jackson, is our manager of pine development at ArborGen.
And today we're going to dive into this topic and dispel some myths about seedling quality and some changes that has come about here recently that the new research has shown with seedling quality and how it impacts your ROI or your return on investment. And we're going to also talk about how at ArborGen we can assure you that the seedling you are getting or the seedling you have purchased is the family.
and the genetic that you want. without further delay, let's get into episode 16 of the ArborGen TreeLines podcast.
Paul Jeffreys (01:33)
And I will just let Dr. Cumbie tell a little bit about himself and how he got into forestry and then let Dr. Jackson do the same.
Patrick Cumbie (01:41)
Hey, I guess my entry into forestry came from walking from the engineering school over to forestry. I didn't know anything about it. I just knew I didn't want to pursue engineering anymore in college. once I got into taking classes, I just fell in love with it and just kept going and got into tree genetics.
Paul Jeffreys (01:58)
So you started out in engineering.
Patrick Cumbie (02:01)
I did for one year. Yep.
Paul Jeffreys (02:02)
for one year.
interesting. Which one?
Patrick Cumbie (02:06)
Civil engineering.
Paul Jeffreys (02:07)
Civil engineering. All right. And Colin, you're one that's not from actually the Southeast. You're from a different part of the area. So which area did you come from?
Colin (02:21)
Well, technically I think Southeast Oklahoma is still the Southeast, at least adjacent to it. So yeah, originally from Southeast Oklahoma and McCurtain County area. So lots of pine trees. My family has worked in forestry. Dad worked for a forestry company for 40 years, but I didn't really get started in the industry until I got.
Paul Jeffreys (02:24)
Well, yeah.
Colin (02:39)
On a project, eco-physiology project with Oklahoma State Forest Extension. And once I realized that there is a whole world of forestry and forestry research that was beyond just putting a tree in the ground and walking away, I was hooked and that just kind of morphed into tying together my interest in genetics and doing high quality research in the forestry world.
Paul Jeffreys (03:01)
Okay. So tell us a little bit about what each one of you do for us here at ArborGen and what your roles are and before we get into the topic today.
Patrick Cumbie (03:11)
Sure, the main focus with our group at ArborGen is our tree breeding effort. So as VP of product development, that's a major piece is the strategy and leading the team for all of our breeding and testing. Collin's a big part of that.
that team as well, but we also manage our seedling quality effort and I'm also responsible for the seed inventory and all the orchard information.
Colin (03:33)
Yeah. And just to follow up, guess, as a part of my role, it's kind of a twofold role. So the first part is managing that breeding testing selection process, interfacing with research cooperatives, installing our trials, getting measurement data, coming up with our crossing plans, all that type of stuff. And then the second part of my job is the genetic allocation. So basically taking
requests from the sales team and putting that into a plan and distributing that where the right genetics go to the right place for the customers based off of what they request. And then general technical support when members of the sales team come to me from, have interesting questions from landowners. So.
Paul Jeffreys (04:19)
Yeah, I can say both of you that we rely a lot on y'all's expertise and when we have questions, y'all definitely fill in for us when we come up short. So, you know, this episode, we're going to be talking about, we talk a lot about genetics and we talk about a lot about our return on investment and performance. But actually, mean, none of that actually matters if the seedling you plant
is not quality enough, it performs when you put it in the ground. I mean, let's face it, you can, you know, it can have the pedigree in its background. It can be, you know, a great family. But if that seedling, when it comes out of the nursery and goes to the landowner consultant or tree planter, if it's not the quality that we pride ourselves on here at ArborGen, it's just not going to perform.
Patrick Cumbie (05:12)
Yeah, that's right, Paul. I mean, it's really the combination of the genetics and having a quality product. So the more that we invest in genetics, the more that our customers are paying attention to genetics and investing. They need to make sure that's packaged into a high quality seedling.
Paul Jeffreys (05:27)
So Patrick, can you tell me, just define what quality or seedling quality is in a simple term?
Patrick Cumbie (05:38)
Sure, we want a tree that.
It's coming out of the nursery that is ready for field planting and it's going to get off to a great start in that plantation. And so that means it's got everything that it needs nutrition wise to get started. And then it is balanced and shoot and root biomass so that it's going to survive well initially under.
under the conditions in field planting. So you don't want a tree that's too tall with a weak root system. You don't want a tree that's out of balance with, you don't want to starve it and not have it balanced in nutrition before it goes. And you don't want it to be actively growing through the fall so that when we lift it and pack it, it's still actively growing in the bag and respiring. You want it to be dormant so that it can go into the cold storage and then go into the field and ready to start when spring starts.
Paul Jeffreys (06:28)
And when does that usually take place?
Patrick Cumbie (06:30)
Well, we start through management. This isn't part of the quality process, but in typical nursery management, you're starting to taper off nutrition and watering with, depending on how the weather goes, certainly by October, you're wanting to harden those seedlings off and so that they're ready to go in November and December with early lifting.
That varies on the weather, so sometimes that's not really done until December. If it's a milder fall, trees may continue to grow above ground growth. They will continue to put on some root growth all the way through the season, but we don't want those seedling tops growing in the fall.
Paul Jeffreys (07:08)
Right. So I hear a lot during planting season. get a lot of calls and people will say, man, the seedlings look great. They're, you know, they're, they're deep green. They are, look like they're just ready to take off growing just as soon as we put them in the ground. But I mean, is that, that's not quite all, you know, that's not just all of it. It just doesn't need to just look good.
it also has to have some other attributes about it. Can you tell us a little bit about what the seedlings, you know, what's going on? you know, their roots, their shoots, just what you're looking for there at that time.
Patrick Cumbie (07:43)
Sure, what we're looking for in a quality seedling, we're gonna look at the overall seedling height above ground, the root collar diameter, so that's the stem diameter, right at the changeover between the stem and the roots at ground level, and then the root mass and root formation. Those are kind of the key pieces there that we're gonna look at in our quality program. And so,
The root biomass is correlated with that root collar diameter. So we know that if you've got a good root collar diameter, that tree has what it needs as far as carbohydrate storage and root biomass to be ready for the field. And so we're targeting between five and five and a half millimeters.
for their root collar diameters. Some customers may prefer larger, but that is the basic target. We want a tree that's basically 10 inches in height. There's gonna be a little bit of range around that, it's, you know, might be eight to 12 inches total, but that's a good height for lifting and packing. And then we want the tap root to be around six inches at a minimum.
six to eight inches and we want a fibrous root system so that it's got some lateral roots and it's ready to to get established in the field.
Paul Jeffreys (08:55)
So basically, to put it mildly, not all seedlings are the same.
Patrick Cumbie (08:59)
Correct. Those metrics I just talked about are the product of our management through the system. ⁓ And so that field is prepared. We're monitoring nutrition, the watering regime, and managing those aspects according to the weather pattern. it can be a, sometimes it requires more irrigation than
Paul Jeffreys (09:05)
Right.
Patrick Cumbie (09:21)
you know, in a dry year versus a wet year. We're also managing the density that the seed is planted so that those trees have space to grow. So if you, you can grow them very thick at a high density, those trees are not going to have the root color diameter that we're looking for. And so there's a, there's a balance of the nutrition and the density and water management that's going to get that, get that tree ready.
Paul Jeffreys (09:43)
Right. So Colin, could you tell me if this seedling quality is so important, then how do we go about measuring the seedling quality? Because I know that's something that you're involved in intricately throughout the year. How do we go about measuring that? And can you give us a little description on the data that you collect?
Colin (10:07)
Yeah, sure. So internally within ArborGen, we kind of put together a program that we call our Seedland Quality Assessment Program. So it's run through our product development department. So it's independent of our nurseries, but essentially what we do is we go in multiple times throughout the year. We look at the density in the bed. We will measure the root collar diameter, the heights.
And all that information and basically what it allows us to do is track the growth throughout the year so that as we get real time data functionally. So it informs basically as a third internal third party check to make sure that we're doing what we need to do as a company to provide a quality seedling. And it allows our managers to be able to adjust based off of the feedback that we give them. So if there are specific families that early in the year seem to be.
lagging behind for whatever reason, it allows them to manage that field or manage that family in a little bit different way to where we can get that up to size and up to spec. The other thing that we do at the end of the year is we will send off samples and measure that group weight ratio and that information we will partner with one of the universities and get a validation of like
Are these seedlings in balance? Are they actually within our targets to have like a high quality grade one, grade two seedling and delivering a premium product with premium genetics? it's a full system. We measured multiple times throughout the year. And at this point, we've done this for, I guess, going on six or seven years. So we have a real volume of data to be able to make real time decisions on how to.
how to adjust management or shift things just due to the trends that we have historically.
Paul Jeffreys (11:52)
And when does this process usually start during the year? I mean, you know, we've just finished, I know speaking with some of our nursery managers, planting the seed at the nursery has just, you know, finished up here within the last couple of weeks. When does this whole, when do we start looking at the seedling quality?
Colin (12:10)
Yeah. So the first round of this generally kind of starts in June, end of June-ish, that allows germination to start and basically be kind of done. That gives us our first estimate of, you know, what our densities are. Did we hit our targets? And then we do this periodically all the way through December. So we'll take a final measurement in December, basically right whenever lifting should be in its peak and make sure that our final measurements are where we want it to be. So it's a, it's a full year process. We
measure anywhere from four or five times, depending upon what the strategy is and the logistics. And this is a program that exists not only for the bareroot, but also for the containers as well. So we will go in and look at densities and all that for the bareroot, but then we'll also go in and make sure that we're getting our root color diameter targets in the containers. And then also make sure that we're striving towards plug fill earlier in the year for those that have early planting.
program for the containers.
Paul Jeffreys (13:08)
Now define that for me a little bit. You mentioned there plug field. And for some people out there, they may not understand exactly what you're talking about there. What do you mean when you say you're measuring plug field?
Colin (13:20)
So, Pluckville is essentially having a really fibrous root system that as you're planted in a container, you drop the seed into a soil media and basically the roots capturing the soil in that cell to where it's one unit. So you can pull that seedling out of the container, all that soil, all that media is held together by the root system and then you can deposit that. like as you're going through the planting process, you're not having, you're not losing soil, you're not breaking off roots. It's just this one nice little package that
allows you to put it into a box and then as it's being handled by the planters know that you're going to get all of your soil media and extra nutrients that has there in the ground.
Paul Jeffreys (13:59)
Yeah, that's very important there because one thing that I've heard in the past is you do not want any air getting to your roots. So you want to have that as field as captured, much capture as possible. So it sounds like that we're doing things that are going above and beyond industry norms. Is that correct?
Patrick Cumbie (14:22)
Certainly there's no standard for, here's an off the shelf quality program for tree seedlings. There's been a fair amount of research, a lot of it out of Auburn University with the nursery cooperative there on how to grow bareroot seedlings. certainly in the...
the past few decades a lot of effort there with integrated companies as we have shifted to TMOs and REITs and you know other
models of land ownership and management, there's less and less of that coordinated effort. And so this is really Arbogen-driven with our customers. Getting feedback from our customers a few years ago really drove our expansion of this effort so that we're looking at the metrics that our customers care about.
Paul Jeffreys (15:07)
Yeah, definitely. I guess you could say definitely we don't just grow seedlings at Auburginne. We actually measure them, validate them, and guarantee that they're ready to go out to their, what I call their final resting place.
Patrick Cumbie (15:19)
Sure, well, it's hard to say guarantee, but we are sampling. Colin described the measurement a little bit, and so we put plots out, so it's a sampling of all those fields. If we've got over 200 million seedlings out in the nursery, we can't measure every single one. So we're looking at a statistical design that gives us confidence to say with high confidence, these different families are reaching the specifications we're after.
Paul Jeffreys (15:35)
Right.
Right, right. So, you know, can you tell me a little bit, you know, we've talked about the differences here. We've talked about the differences in the root to shoot ratio or shoot to root ratio, which is when I started with the company 12 years ago, it's what we were basing the standard on. And now that has changed from shoot to root ratio to shoot to root mass or weight ratio. And, you know, those changes come about
You know, tell me a little bit about the research that has gone on with these traits that we're measuring and what the research shows is important for the seedling quality.
Patrick Cumbie (16:23)
Well, I think the main driver in that balance between shoot and root is the biomass. And so that's really where we've shifted to instead of say a shoot height, a seedling height and a root length that it's more about the total biomass that's there. And so that's making sure that ratio is 20 to 25%.
is root biomass in the seedling of dry weight. So we're looking at sampling seedlings and taking those measurements and then they're dried in an oven and they take the weights of the different parts of the seedling to make sure that that biomass is balanced. And that comes from, you know, making sure the trees we're managing the height of the seedlings and we've got good
root growth in the field. And that can be a challenge if you're planting at too high of a density. If you're trying to really pack those seedlings in, you can still push those with nutrition, with nitrogen, but you're going to get a lot of top growth if you don't watch out. And so that's part of what we're doing in our, know, our nursery teams are actively managing that so that there's a good amount of root growth with those seedlings to match the tops.
Paul Jeffreys (17:35)
Right. Okay, well, and you mentioned something there is, you know, is this all our own internal research or has there's been a lot of research on the outside of this, like with the co-op and everything to discover what the perfect size seedling is?
Patrick Cumbie (17:50)
Well, yeah, there's some, I mean, most of that work is either out of Auburn or some with the US Forest Service, but there have been some guidelines developed over the years, particularly for bareroot seedlings, where bigger tends to be better. So if you've got a small tree, if it's too small, say if it's a root collar diameter below four millimeters, its chance of survival is much less.
Now, you can extend that to a place where it's just not practical of like, hey, an eight millimeter seedling, you know, by the model or the equation, it says it's gonna have a much higher survival than a four millimeter, but a lot of people are gonna have trouble planting an eight millimeter tree. And so, you know, we've settled to something between five and six millimeters is...
is kind of the balance there of significantly better survival than a three to five millimeter tree, but it is manageable in the field for planting. That is the root collar diameter. And so you'll see a tissue change right on the stem of the tree from the above ground stem growth to root.
Paul Jeffreys (18:45)
And where is that measurement taken at?
Patrick Cumbie (18:57)
And that's with a small pair of calipers, you're measuring how many millimeters the diameter of the stem is there.
Paul Jeffreys (19:03)
Okay, excuse me. So, know, I guess the takeaway here is anybody can grow a seedling, but not everyone can consistently deliver on that it performs after it's grown in the nursery and then taken out. you know, we also at the company, have the
what we call MCP, the mass control pollinated, but you know, from pollination to planting you know, we, guaranteed genetic integrity with every step of the way through, you know, that when you order seedlings from, from us, from ArborGen, not only are you going to get that quality seedling that has had the measurements taken, that has been, that has been monitored through the growing process in the nursery.
But we're also going to guarantee the integrity of the genetic that's in that tree. it's kind of like seedlings are kind of like when you go to the window in the hospital at a nursery, all the babies look the same, but you can't tell what is actually in the genetic of each one of those children. So here, you take a seedling out of the box. We've checked it. We're making sure that it meets the standards. It makes the quality standards of an Arbogen tree.
I've also had landowners ask me, how do I know that is the genetic that I bought or how do I know that's the genetic that I wanted to plant on my property?
Patrick Cumbie (20:37)
Well, so I'll start. I think, you know, and this goes back to actually the previous question.
Looking at this type of information in our crop is just like looking at your pine plantation. If you're far enough away, everything looks okay from a distance. And so if you're just driving by a plantation, you might not notice all the rust galls and the crook and forks in the trees. And so you don't think there's a difference between genetics until you step in and look at that plantation. In the same way in our nursery beds, you know, the trees are green, they're happy.
Paul Jeffreys (21:07)
You're right.
Patrick Cumbie (21:13)
Everything looks fine from a distance. When you start measuring, collecting that data and looking at information, that's when you can make sure that things are on track. And in the same way, when we look at the seed and the parents of the seed, when you have to drill down to look at the DNA, that's when we can tell, is it really the right tree and are we making the cross that we're supposed to? So.
Paul Jeffreys (21:37)
Right.
So let's talk about that when you talk about crossing and mass control pollinated and what you're discussing there. So what does mass control pollinated actually mean, Colin?
Colin (21:49)
Yeah. So mass control pollinated essentially means that you know who the mother and who the father in that cross is. pollinated, you know who the mother is. have orchards that have been established. They're, grafted individuals. we know basically have genetically identical individuals throughout the, throughout the orchard. So we know who the moms are based off of going out, selecting, we do some genotyping and fingerprinting to make sure as we established orchard blocks that we know.
This parent that we selected in the field is the one that's being put into this location in the orchard. All of that gets monumented. So there's always a pretty high confidence of, you know, who the mom is open pollinated that pollen comes from everywhere. I think it's been shown that like pollen will fly from, Virginia down to middle, Georgia. it's, it's a wide ranging thing. And the advantage here is for MCP is that.
We will go in, we will put bags over the female's dribbly, and then we will mechanically, physically go in and pollinate those flowers with a known father. So that's going to be pollen that we collected from the orchard. We know who that is. We have a barcode and a tracking system to where when these lots are collected and processed, there's a name and there's an ID that follows that all the way through. So the MCP is essentially just controlling who that pollen parent is.
controlling the actual what would be happening in nature, but doing that mechanically.
Paul Jeffreys (23:13)
So it sounds like to me there's a chain of custody there that stays on the tree and tell me a little bit how that chain of custody works and how we guarantee that once those, from the time that we're pollinating, we're putting the bags on the flowers to keep the outside pollen, the wild pollen from getting to the flowers. Tell us a little bit about how that works.
And you know, and also how long does this whole process take?
Colin (23:45)
Yeah. So the chain of custody thing is a good question because there are so many different steps from going from selecting a tree out in the field and a progeny trial that, uh, looks very good to putting that into an orchard to then having that grow, do the pollination, collect the seed, store the seed, get it to the nursery. So essentially it's, you know, record keeping and attention to detail. mean, every
We have a systematic naming convention that as soon as something gets selected in the field and it goes into an orchard, that name is carried throughout the entire process. We go in and we color coat some of our brimettes in the orchard to where we know, hey, this color is associated with this family. We'll validate that through fingerprinting or genotyping at the orchard establishment. And then as far as the MCP process goes, will, we tag each branch that
MCP is being done on. So if that branch has bags put up on it and has the control crosses being made on it, we tag that individual branch to where throughout the entire process, we know, hey, these flowers on this branch will be MCP cones. So as we're going through and doing harvest 18 months later, we can go in, look for these tags, and know we will collect all the cones from the tagged branches.
separately and then come back in and for our open pollinated families, we will collect from branches that are not been tagged. So it allows us to differentiate those in the orchards on the same trees. And then once the harvest happens, there's a lot ID that gets assigned to that seed from the moment it's picked all the way up until sowing out in the nursery bed. So there's a lot ID, there's a barcode, it tracks the entire process through.
There's never really any moment that there's like, we don't know where this box came from or we think it's from this one. It's like, no, we can go back into our records in our database and say lot XYZ is associated with this family. came from this orchard at this year. So it's, it's a lot of systematic, detail oriented tracking to make sure that, we have the right information when we need it.
Patrick Cumbie (25:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think there was something like 14 steps where the ID is transferred to go from the seed orchard to like lifting and packaging for the customer. There's more steps than that in the whole process, but there's, we found 14 steps where the ID has to be transferred from one package or format to another.
Paul Jeffreys (25:56)
It you.
So needless to say that when you get the family, when you pick the family that you want and you get those seedlings from us, the steps have been put in place to make sure that that family is the one that the client or customer is getting to plant on his or her property.
Colin (26:35)
Yes, yeah, I mean, that's a huge part of what we do and we take a lot of pride in it. And I think everybody in the organization does is to make sure that, you know, customer has an expectation and a trust that we provide them with the product that they are, they're paying good money and hard, hard earned money to, that they're to buy. So ultimately this is an investment for our customers for 25 or 30 years, but it's also an investment for us as a seedling company.
It takes 18 months just to pollinate the flowers and then be able to get a harvest off of the tree. And as far as the whole establishment and from orchard establishment all the way out to breeding testing selection, orchard establishment and getting a product into the nursery is about a 25 year process for us as well. So we want to be able to have a lot of confidence that what we've done is done correctly and.
I think there's a lot of accountability internally within ArborGen that we want to do this right.
Paul Jeffreys (27:32)
Right. So, you know, that we've talked about the quality of the seedlings and we've talked about the control pollinated are in our orchards that we have across the southeast where we're developing or creating or pollinating and getting our own seed for our own seedlings. Is every flower on a tree bagged or how do we go about getting, you know, we talked about the open pollinated?
You know, we've got to collect those from somewhere. So can you tell how that is set up and how we keep that separate?
Patrick Cumbie (28:02)
Sure. So we collect both oak and pollinated seed and control pollinator MCP seed from some of the same trees. And so those mother trees that make great OP or also make great MCP when we put bags on and pollinate. So we tag every branch with like a zip tie or a trucker seal.
So every branch that gets a bag put on it has a tag on it that's color coded. So we know that it's, it's been pollinated. once, you once you take that bag off, you can't tell the difference between a cone or cone that's been pollinated or open pollinated. And so we, we mark those branches and then as Colin said, takes 18 months for those to develop into mature cones when we get the seed. And so those are then collected separately. we, collect the branches.
Paul Jeffreys (28:36)
Right. Right.
Patrick Cumbie (28:50)
that have tags on them, and we know that that's a specific cross that was made on that tree. And then we also collect the open pollinated separately. And so those are sorted and processed separately and tracked separately.
Paul Jeffreys (29:03)
Right. So when you add your collecting them separately and all of that, once you collect the cone and you have them and you've got the ID there with them and you've got everything separated, where does it go from there? And where do we go with the cones to that point? Because we're not letting them open on the...
on the tree, they're collected before they open so that we can make sure that we get all of those seeds. Where does the process go from there?
Patrick Cumbie (29:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yep, so the cones are monitored on the tree for ripeness. So as the cone ripens, starts to dry out so you can measure the density or specific gravity of the cone. And so before those cones open up and release that seed, we collect them. And they go into containers or crates.
by family, so that specific cross or family is collected. They go into bins and they're allowed to ripen for about six weeks.
Paul Jeffreys (29:48)
Mm-hmm.
Patrick Cumbie (29:57)
And so the cones will dry out, start to open up. But we process each of those separately. So Colin was talking about a "lot." a specific family at a specific orchard location harvested in a given year. That's how that...
that family is processed all the way through the system. So it'll go into a kiln where it's dried and that's kept separate from other families. So there's not mixture. And then those cones are tumbled to take all the seed out. And then the seed goes through a cleaning and sorting process. And that's all done in a batch tracked with that lot and family ID.
Paul Jeffreys (30:31)
So you're reducing, you know, I guess the take home here is going to be in return and getting it back to the return on the investment when you invest in seedlings from ArborGen. You're getting exactly what you selected and paid for. Plus you are getting something to where we have reduced the risk. There's no guesswork. There's no surprises. You know from our data and from third party data that you are getting.
So, you know, the long-term impact is you're getting better survival growth and value at all of that. So, you know, at the end of the day, our clients, our customers, they're not just buying seedlings, they're buying certainty. So let me ask you this, what happens or what can happen if the quality isn't there in the seedlings? What can, what could be the outcome of that?
know, what have we seen when planting seedlings that are too big, too small, don't meet those specs, what can happen in that type of situation?
Patrick Cumbie (31:31)
Sure, well, to me, think the focus on quality in the seedling is really trying to control the things that we can. So when a tree is out in the environment, it's exposed to a lot of different factors and effects that we have no control over. And so we wanna make sure the things we can control are.
are where they need to be. And so if that tree is not balanced with shoot root biomass, if it's not of the right size, if it's not shut down, hardened off and ready to go into storage and then transplanting, you're really looking at survival challenges to just to have that tree transplant, survive and start to grow roots and get established. If it's undersized,
even if you have great genetics, you're still putting it behind the eight ball. And so it's, it's got to catch up. And so you want that tree to be, you know, the right size in the right conditions so it can get established and grow quickly. know, we see in our research trials, we see in good, well-managed stands, these trees can grow. They have the genetic potential to grow five feet a year or more.
But if you don't manage it, even if you manage the site well, if your seedlings are undersized, you're not going to get that growth potential.
Paul Jeffreys (32:42)
Right, right. And you know,
If your seedlings are undersized and you, you you plan them out and you don't get that initial growth, then that could open them up to, you know, succumbing to, being, being more susceptible to drought, being more susceptible to, competition. And, know, if that quality isn't there, then you're, really, you're, you're reducing your, what everybody goes back to their.
their return on their investment.
Colin (33:12)
Yeah.
Patrick Cumbie (33:12)
Yeah, I think the other piece is the cold damage. You know, if you have undersized trees, you know, there's just multiple environmental risk factors that you're dealing with that you're at risk for losing trees to.
Colin (33:22)
Yeah, I mean, also along those lines, if your trees are not shut down appropriately, that's the other part. If they're actively growing in the end of December because they've been pushed with fertilizer to try to hit a certain spec, then you're also opening yourself up to a lot more environmental impacts as well. So being able to track that growth throughout the year and deliver a premium seedling for premium genetics to where you get off to a good start and can have the...
have the growth in that first year to really establish your stand in a successful way is key.
Paul Jeffreys (33:55)
Right, you're right. So, you know, getting back to it and before we end up here today, you know, the takeaways for the landowners and the foresters, you know, it is, we measure the quality here at ArborGen and we use a lot of standards, but we also want to have consistency across our product.
And we want to have that root integrity and that uniformity for the seedlings because let's face it, if it's not there, you could suffer a bad situation for your stand on throughout the life of that rotation. So you're not just buying a tree, you're investing here in a 20 to 30 year outcome.
And it's got a, you know, the most important part of that whole process is what's done at the beginning and how it started. So if you cut corners, you're not going to have that, you may not have that income or that outcome that you are wanting expecting when it comes time for that final harvest.
So again, I would like to thank Dr. Jackson and Dr. Cumbie for coming on and joining us today for this episode of the TreeLines podcast. I'm your host, Paul Jeffreys.
If you have any more questions about our SQA program or seedling quality assurance, please reach out to your local reforestation advisor or visit us at arborgen.com. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the TreeLines podcast. Thank you and have a great day.