Effects of girdling and gibberellin A4/7 on flowering of European and Japanese larch grafts in an outdoor clone bank

Field-grown European larch (Larixdecidua Mill.) and Japanese larch (Larixkaempferi (Lamb.) Carr.) grafts were treated with main-stem girdling applied with or without injection of gibberellin A4/7 (GA4/7). The level of female coning was low in the untreated trees and was significantly increased by girdling; the mean number of seed cones per tree, on trees receiving girdling alone, was 71 for the European larch and 50 for the Japanese larch. There was considerable male flowering on the untreated trees, (701 and 1208 cones per tree on the European and Japanese larch, respectively), and on trees receiving girdling alone there were 1356 pollen cones per tree on the European larch, and 2035 on the Japanese larch, representing increases of 94 and 68%, respectively, compared with the untreated trees. The overall girdling effect on male flowering, however, was not statistically significant for either species. GA4/7 application produced no significant increases in coning, and in fact fewer pollen cones were observed on GA4/7-treated grafts than on grafts without GA4/7. Between 6 and 12% of the pollen-cone buds on untreated trees did not flush successfully, and the GA4/7 application significantly increased this proportion of unflushed buds. Girdling is an easy and effective treatment to increase female coning of European and Japanese larch and may also result in increases in pollen cones; thus, it would be a useful treatment to assist in the breeding of these species and the production of their hybrid (Larix ×eurolepis A. Henry).