Feedback by Victor Chano

By: Victor Chano

At the Joint EVOLTREE-FORGENIUS Conference / Third Biannual EVOLTREE Conference “Integrative Diversity of Forest Ecosystems” I presented a talk entitled “Genome-wide genotyping and epigenotyping strongly correlated in Norway”. This oral presentation presents a major outcome of my postdoctoral research, integrating genome-wide genotyping and epigenotyping to inform genomic selection in Norway spruce breeding material. The results reveal strong genetic control of CpG methylation in breeding populations, while CHG and CHH methylation patterns in natural populations appear more strongly influenced by environmental adaptation. Moreover, I also presented a poster entitled “Use of high-throughput plant phenotyping in Norway spruce seedlings to study early differentiation of crown morphotypes”, where we demonstrate the potential of high-throughput plant phenotyping to detect early morphological differentiation in Norway spruce seedlings from contrasting ecotypes along altitudinal gradients. In addition, I also participate in another poster presentation with title “European beech growth responses to climate and altitudinal gradients in the South-Eastern Carpathian Mountains”, analyzing earlywood and latewood growth and their relationships with climatic variables across three elevations to better understand how beech populations respond to climate conditions.
My presence in this event provided the opportunity to discuss methods, and interpretation of my results with a broad panel of experts on forest genomics and epigenomics, building my network to improve these studies and discuss future joint projects on these topics