Photo credit: NRCan
Balsam fir (Abies balsamea) on a logging ground in Forestville on the North Shore (province of Quebec).
Forestry in Canada is a big business and major source of wealth for Canadians. According to The State of Canada's Forests: Annual Report 2022, the forestry sector provided income for local workers in 2,400 communities, contributed $25.2 billion to nominal gross domestic product, supported more than 300 forest-reliant communities and directly employed more than 184,000 Canadians. No nation derives more net benefit from trade in forest products than Canada. The gap between Canada and Sweden, the second-largest net trader, has been continuously expanding since 2009.
Increasingly, buyers of wood products want to know that these products were grown and harvested sustainably. Governments around the world have an interest in fighting illegal logging and the illegal timber trade, while also combatting deforestation as part of the global effort against climate change.
Genomics meeting the needs of a 21st-century forest sector
This is where Nathalie Isabel, a research scientist in forest and environmental genomics at the Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) comes in. With funding from the Government of Canada's Genomics Research and Development Initiative (GRDI), she is leading a project that aims to successfully use genomics to establish the species identity and geographic origin of trees from wood samples, such as black spruce, which is commonly used in Canada's forestry sector.
The Canadian Wood ID Project
This project is part of a larger undertaking, the Canadian Wood ID Project, led by NRCan, Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency. Its goal is to develop traceability tools to identify wood products, which would prevent the importation of illegal wood and support Canadian forest certification for market access.
The concept of traceability is the foundation of this certification, which is currently voluntary. It expresses the idea that using various tools, including genomics, provides assurance that a forest company is operating legally, sustainably and in compliance with internationally recognized standards. Forest management certification began to be adopted across Canada between the late 1990s and 2008. Although voluntary, it proved to be popular within the forest sector. By 2021, according to NRCan's factsheet on forest management certification, 161 million hectares of forest in Canada were certified.
Photo credit: NRCan
Wood yard of an oak (Quercus) sawmill in Plessisville in the Centre-du-Québec region (province of Quebec).
Characterizing the genetic fingerprint of tree species
Dr. Isabel and her team are contributing to characterizing the genetic "fingerprint" of tree species. They do so by providing new ways to tell whether the wood being examined is, in fact, the same wood being described in its documentation, which is a key step in fulfilling the requirements for certification.
There are 3 approaches that use genetic markers, all of which are relevant to the wood ID project:
- The fingerprint approach uses genetic markers to identify individual trees in comparison to a reference tree.
- The taxonomic identification approach uses other genetic markers to identify species.
- The phylogeographic approach uses other genetic markers to identify geographic origins of different members of the same species.
Photo credit: NRCan
Bundle of 2 in x 8 in balsam fir (Abies balsamea) after planing at the Duchesnay Forestry School sawmill (province of Quebec).
Developing a reference database
Using these approaches, Dr. Isabel is contributing to the development of a reference database of trees native to Canada, based on genomics, wood anatomy and chemical signature.
Since there is so much variability within and among tree species, "you need a lot of data to identify the species with precision and even more to determine the geographic origin of an individual," says Dr. Isabel. "Natural hybridization between closely related species (e.g. red spruce and black spruce) means that only genomics can tease out the needed information."
The black spruce example
Take black spruce, for instance. About 3,000 black spruce trees have been genotyped, identifying 3 major genetic groups, each with its own genomic signature. Differences between these signatures are found in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced snips), a genomic variant present in a tree's DNA. These SNPs reflect the evolutionary history of trees resulting from past glaciations, as well as their adaptation to specific environments. SNPs are present in the DNA of all living things.
Dr. Isabel and her team are also studying lodgepole pine, trembling aspen, red oak and eastern white pine trees.
"Different species have different evolutionary histories," says Dr. Isabel. "Genomic analysis reveals those stories."
Photo credit: Lisa Tischenko
Northern red oaks (Quercus rubra) DNA.
Meeting tree-related challenges with new methods of analysis
"DNA extraction from wood can be challenging," Dr. Isabel says, "especially from timber products, where the DNA is less abundant and more degraded, so different methods are needed." She has found that metabolomics is a cheaper and easier-to-use approach for species identification from wood. Metabolomics looks for specific metabolites, which are secondary compounds produced naturally by trees.
Developing metabolomic profiles for individual trees and species helps industry identify different species. This can be particularly important for trees that share the same name but that are actually different species. For example, approximately 200 trees worldwide are known as cedars, even when they are nothing like the cedars we know in Canada.
Making sure end-users take advantage of new knowledge
The obvious end-users of this research are members of the forestry sector here in Canada, who will benefit from increased market access thanks to their ability to provide information about the source of their product. Other end-users include consumers who want to know more about the wood used in the furniture and other products they buy.
Fortunately, NRCan's Canadian Forest Service is in close contact with members of the forestry sector and will use those contacts to ensure the sector is aware of the possibility of using genomics to trace wood.
Thanks to Dr. Isabel and to funding from the GRDI, new analysis methods using DNA are helping one of Canada's traditional economic sectors meet the needs of the 21st-century.