BIHT

The Irish Independent's farming correspondent Joe Barry was hugely impressed by BIHT's work on a recent visit to the Forestry and Bio Energy Show at Birr Castle Estate.

He visited our stand where Michael Carey and John Fennessy explained about our work. He left mightily impressed but saddened that our work hadn't started 20 or 30 years earlier, when he was planting broadleaves and would have loved to have had access to improved trees.

Under the banner headline "Hardwoods scheme a 'plus' to industry", here's what he had to say about BIHT:-

"Impressive

Perhaps the most impressive items I saw at the show were some very special trees that are part of trials being undertaken by the British and Irish Hardwoods Improvement Trust (BIHT) and which had been grafted last summer and grown in a tunnel, their parents being two carefully selected 'plus' trees.

Dr Michael Carey explained to me how, as part of its programme, the BIHT selected 190 of these superior trees across Britain and Ireland over the past five years. Cuttings have been taken from these and propagated on at Kinsealy Research Station by Dr Gerry Douglas.

The propagated material will eventually find its way into three seed orchards in the North and two sites in Britain. Seed will be collected from these orchards and then passed on to the nurseries and finally to us, the timber growers, when they are ready to plant out.

These 'plus' trees could transform our approach to forestry and hopefully make broadleaf growing a genuinely profitable option for landowners.

Up to now, we have tended to rely almost totally on Sitka spruce for planting in our commercial woodlands and have concentrated our research on improving those conifer species that grow so well in Ireland. While conifers comprise around 70pc of our planted area and are the mainstay of our thriving sawmilling and processing industry, there is also a need for hardwoods to reduce imports and allow us to make the best use of the better land that is capable of growing them.

To date, the poor quality of much of our broadleaf stock has hindered development and led to an understandable reluctance on the part of woodland owners to plant them.

Working closely with COFORD, the BIHT has now established stands of superior selected trees to provide seed for the ultimate 'plus' trees that can deliver high-quality timber over a greatly reduced timeframe. The BIHT has already established seed stands of birch, ash, cherry, sycamore, chestnut, oak and walnut.

COFORD's John Fennessy told me that the forestry body will have the first 1kg of improved birch seed from an Irish orchard ready this year to go out to nurseries.

Broadleaf breeding has enormous potential.

I only wish we had this programme in place 20 or 30 years ago so that I, and others like me who planted broadleaves, could have availed of this superior stock.

For further information on the BIHT, contact Dr Michael Carey at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Read the full article in the Irish Independent here