Larch is a conifer which is characterised by relatively fast growth. Among conifers, its specialised trait of losing its needles in the winter has some advantages, especially in areas with high levels of air pollution. The breeding history of this tree species in Europe, especially in Germany, goes back more than 40 years. Today several possible parent combinations are known, seed orchards are established, and field trials and natural stands exist, which allow the selection of suitable material for practical purposes as well as for continued breeding and tree improvement. Some of the selected tree stocks are already characterised according to their wood quality and resistence to decay. Larch is known as a wood which normally does not need any chemical protection. This will make larch of increasing interest for forestry in the future. Conifers often flower well only at intervals of several years, in an irregular cycle. As a result, seed material derived from seed orchards and from controlled pollination is not available every year and often is only available in limited amounts. This situation has resulted in the search for vegetative and microvegetative propagation methods for larch. Tissue culture and micropropagation methods were evaluated for these reasons. Seedlings from hybrid larch, characterised by a faster growth rate and an increased tolerance to air pollution, were used to investigate these methods. Larch clones are important for research tasks (e.g. resistance research) and for establishing clonal mixtures suitable for reforestation. Regeneration systems in vitro are necessary preconditions for gene transfer as well. Therefore the basic methods were developed and established for juvenile plant material (zygotic embryos, seedlings, saplings). Foresters, however, are generally interested in trees that have proven quality traits such as growth performance and resistance over long periods. This assessment is often made at half the rotation age. The negative aspect of such an extended assessment is that, by that time, most of the individuals have lost their ability to be propagated vegetatively. Moreover, even when vegetative propagation of selected adult individuals is possible, it is often linked with improper root formation and plagiotropism. For different Larix species, there is interest in obtaining propagules with juvenile growth behaviour from selected adult trees. This includes trees from natural stands as well as hybrids derived from breeding experiments. But micropropagation of mature trees is often, although not always, more difficult than in vitro propagation of juvenile material such as zygotic embryos or seedlings. This is especially true for some of those conifers used in large scale forestry, including larch (Bonga & von Aderkas, 1988; Chalupa, 1991, 2004; Karnosky et al., 1993). Plant production from shoot formation or shoot development is often lower than from cultures initiated from juvenile plant material. Cultures of adult and juvenile origin also differ in growth behaviour and morphology. Finally, both rooting success and transfer to the soil pose problems because of reduced root growth. Most of the difficulties are due to phase changes during tree development. Nevertheless, it is reportedly possible to overcome these difficulties, at least for those genotypes which showed better responses to tissue culture (Bonga & von Aderkas, 1993). Preconditioning of the plant material (grafting, pruning) is sometimes required and different tissue culture methods must be optimised to gain a degree of reinvigoration and rejuvenation of the plant material. Attention was also focused on possible factors responsible for successful propagation of adult donor trees. This chapter will summarise the work accomplished to date, and will consider possibilities and problems for future work.
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Ewald, D. (2007). Micropropagation of Larix Species via Organogenesis. In: Jain, S.M., Häggman, H. (eds) Protocols for Micropropagation of Woody Trees and Fruits. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6352-7_12
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