Finland

The genetic conservation of forest trees in Finland started as a project in the Finnish Forest Research Institute in the early 1990’s. The first gene reserve forest was selected in 1992 and The National Programme on Plant Genetic Resources in Agriculture and Forestry was published in 2001 and is currently under revision. 

The programme defines the targets and principal methods for the management of genetic resources, covering agricultural and horticultural plants as well as forest trees. The organization responsible for that is Luke (Natural Resources Institute Finland) and the work is supervised by the National Advisory Body for Genetic Resources. As a core task, the forest gene conservation programme has established in situ networks of gene reserve forests for all the main tree species and dynamic ex situ collections for the scattered tree species.

Currently, the in situ network consists of 44 gene reserve forests, the total area of which is 7218 hectares. The gene conservation collections cover six rare tree species. The material is grown as clones or seedlings depending on the species and the total number of individuals in the collections is around 7000 trees.