Seed provenancing

Local provenancing Local provenancing is a strategy that relies exclusively on using seeds sourced either from within the restoration site (strict local provenance) or from nearby areas (relaxed local provenance) and has long been the focus of restoration guidelines. This strategy is grounded in the concept of local adaptation, maintaining that the use of locally adapted seed is best for the longevity of restoration projects because of their increased fitness in the local environment, decreasing the risk of maladaptation to local conditions and outbreeding depression. It has also been found that the use of local seed can be important to protect important biotic interactions, including pollinator interactions and pathogen resistance. In the use of local provenancing for broadscale restoration, it can be difficult to define a "local" provenance. It has been argued that the most useful approach to defining a local provenance is one that is genetically informed, such as using significant genetic differentiation (e.g. differentiation in neutral or adaptive genetic markers) to describe provenances. Additionally, the strict use of local provenance has the potential to encourage inbreeding and low genetic variation in a population, further threatening a population's ability to persist long-term. With this, many new provenancing strategies have been proposed to supplement local provenances with nonlocal ones to maximize evolutionary potential to increase the long-term success of restored populations that are facing changing environmental conditions; these proposed strategies include admixture, composite, climate-adjusted, and predictive provenancing. These proposed provenancing techniques are not applicable to all restoration efforts, and the success of each one depends on the contextual factors of each population, which include: This strategy would introduce pre-adapted genotypes into the population, maintaining genetic variation and improving the evolutionary resilience of the population. == Practical applications ==

File:USDA eastern seed-collection zones.jpg|thumb|Established seed transfer zones in the east coast of the US, by the Eastern Seed Zone Forum (a unit of the US Forest Service) Seed transfer guidelines The use of provenancing is important for seed transfer guidelines in the field of forestry and ecological restoration, as it is important to match planting sites with well-adapted seed provenances to develop healthy, productive plantings. Seed transfer guidelines establish general rules that apply when planting on sites where the species naturally occurs, but may also establish rules for specific species. They also establish seed transfer zones, which are areas within which plant materials can be transferred with little risk of maladaptation due to climatic similarities. Seed transfer zones consider the distinctive habitats that are found within the range of a species, and are divided up based on this since certain individuals within the species are better suited for that site. The size of a tree seed zone can range from a few thousand acres to many thousand square miles since differences in topography influence the quantity of environmental heterogeneity seen in an area. They use geospatial climate data to derive regions of relative climatic similarity, predicting regions of local adaptation across a climate gradient. Because these seed transfer zones apply to specific species, they can decrease the number of estimated seed sources per species needed, helping managers balance both ecological and economic considerations. In the development of these seed zones, provenance trials are used to identify provenances that are well-adapted to the target region, which are common-garden experiments that evaluate plants for morphology, phenology, production, and physiological related traits. With this data, statistical analyses are applied to develop models that link genetic variation across the target region, allowing seed zones to be assigned. ==References==