Head of Research, Jo Clark has been revisiting our oak progeny trials, the breeding seedling orchards. They are now 17 years old.

Jo carried out a visual assessment to inform the next steps. The decision was made to remeasure all eight trials in this trial series next winter (2020).

There are 66,000 trees across eight trials which will be reassessed next winter.

Following the results we will look to see which half sibling families are doing the best across all sites, and at each individual site. Then, we will rogue the trees at each site. At this point, they become tested (highest category of FRM) seed orchards, and we will have improved oak for the first time in the UK.