Certification of forest reproductive materials and its role in climate-smart forestry: A case study of identification of origin of beech forest reproductive material using molecular analysis in South-Eastern Europe ​

The quality and origin of forest reproductive material (FRM) shapes the genetic diversity, structural composition, survival dynamics, and growth of seedlings, coupled with the prospective resilience of future forests to stressors and disturbances. Certified FRM assists in ensuring the quality, authenticity, and adherence to specified standards in the production and distribution phase of FRM. This study explores the status of FRM certification, the laws and regulations based on it, in four South-East European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. There are two FRM certification schemes in Europe, namely Council Directive 1999/105/EC and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Forest Seed and Plant Scheme. Their aim is to make sure that these materials are collected, processed, grown, labelled, and distributed in a way that ensures they are true to their given names. Literature review and data mining through secondary sources were employed to compile laws and regulations relating to FRM and conservation of forest genetic resources (FGR) for the countries under study. The case study presented deals with the identification of the origin of beech (Fagus sylvatica) using molecular markers. Samples of 32 beech stands were analyzed using microsatellites. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia still follow Yugoslav Standards (YUS) for certification measures. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia heavily rely on it, while Croatia relies on it partly. Only Slovenia has a compulsory system to check and verify the origin of FRM intended for marketing and use. All the target countries have distinct laws pertaining to FRM, except Bosnia and Herzegovina where only its entity Republic of Srpska has law on FRM, but not the state. This highlights the need for Bosnia and Herzegovina to give more importance to conservation of genetic resources. From a technical perspective, the molecular markers did not consistently prove to be suitable for the identification of the individuals. There were discrepancies in the results, where K=7 was unable to trace the origin of the individuals, whereas with K=3 the samples were correctly matched with their origin. Hence in the case study presented, the applied methods for the molecular identification of the origin of FRM did not prove to be very useful. This result stresses on the need for more technical advancements needed on application of molecular methods on tracing the origin of FRM.