Genetic relationships between growth characters in Salix viminalis grown in Sweden

From an eight by eight factorial crossing with Salix viminalis, 40 of the 64 families obtained were selected for further analysis. Fourteen seedplants from each of these 40 families were planted in two pairs of contrasting environments: sand and clay soil, and low and high nutrient supply. The material in the soil contrast was harvested after 1, 4 and 6 years of growth. The material in the nutrient contrast was harvested each year for 3 years and analysed after the first and the third harvests. The correlation between number of shoots and weight in the clay environment changed from being negative in the first harvests to positive at the last harvest, compared with the sand environment where this correlation was positive in all years. In the nutrient contrast this correlation was positive at the last harvest in the high nutrient environment, but no correlation could be detected in the low nutrient environment. The differences in correlations between environments may be due to a different allocation of nutrients in the plants, depending on whether the plant is under stress or not. The data suggests that the genetic relationship between growth components is the same over age and environments when the plants are grown without stress.