ABSTRACT
Domestication of eucalypts for oil production in plantations is in its infancy. Tree breeders have only just started to make genetic changes to planting stock and in many instances seed for plantations still comes from natural stands. Eucalypts are largely outbreeding and genetically highly variable, which represents a huge opportunity for the tree breeder, whose main task is to exploit this variability through exploration, evaluation, selection and breeding. In this situation, large gains in heritable traits such as various growth and oil characteristics can be achieved simply and cheaply using relatively unsophisticated procedures. This is in marked contrast to many agricultural crops (e.g. barley, wheat and rice) that have been domesticated for thousands of years, are in many cases inbreeding species, and where changes such as polyploidy and mutation need to be artificially induced by breeders.
