Abstract
Nearly 4 billion hectares of forest covers the earth's surface, roughly 30 percent of its total land area, and its 5 percent is forest plantation. Forests are expected as sustainable bioresource substitutional of fossil fuels and are noteworthy for the role of CO2 fixation. Especially, Eucalyptus species constitute the most widely planted hardwood trees in the world and are most profitable for pulp production due to the fast growing and higher content of cellulose. Eucalyptus species are focused on as biomass energy source and Eucalyptus genome is currently being sequenced.
We selected hundreds of elite candidate trees (Eucalyptus globulus) that showed more than 1.5 times of wood volume compared with the biggest surrounding trees or were able to survive in drought areas from the plantation area in Western Australia. Several lines had higher photosynthesis activity under the drought condition in a greenhouse. Furthermore, coline oxidase from soil bacterium, Arthrobactor globiformis were introduced into Eucalyptus hypocotyls and the transgenic plants with higher expression levels were produced. We are evaluating their characters.
