Abstract

The increasing stresses imposed on forests by climatic changes require agile and adaptive management, in which tree breeding plays a crucial role. Assessment of G×E interactions has been highlighted as an explicit source of information for targeted breeding for resilience and productivity via better coupling of the demands of genotypes and locally anticipated climatic changes. Commonly, the genetic effects are evaluated for morphometric traits, which are a cumulative representation of the past conditions. In this study, the variability of increment and its relation to weather fluctuations were addressed as a climate-sensitive functional trait. Parallel Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) progeny trials representing hemiboreal conditions and a local productivity (edaphic) gradient in Lithuania were studied to evaluate G×E effects on increment, combining tree-ring analysis and quantitative genetics. Scots pine progenies showed low environmental sensitivity of radial increment, which, however, showed complex region-specific relationships with

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