Trees4Future - Sweden Visit

In March 2016 Elspeth Macdonald, researcher and lecturer in forestry at the Scottish School of Forestry, travelled to Stockholm to spend a week working with Swedish colleagues at Innventia (www.innventia.com). This training visit was supported through the EU-funded Trees4Future project (www.trees4future.eu), under a transnational access scheme which aims to give researchers the opportunity to use state-of-the-art facilities in several laboratories across Europe. The purpose of the visit was to use Innventia’s SilviScan^TM instrument, one of only three such facilities in operation in the world. SilviScan is an integrated system which provides detailed measurements of wood density, earlywood and latewood width, microfibril angle and cross-sectional cell dimensions – properties which are important in determining the mechanical performance and utilisation potential of timber.

Wood samples cut from trees growing in a Sitka spruce progeny trial were taken to Sweden for analysis. During the visit Elspeth worked with Swedish colleagues to complete the intensive sample preparation required before analysis and was able to observe and learn about each stage of the SilviScan analysis. The work was part of an ongoing collaborative research project between Inverness College, Forest Research and the University of Aberdeen, aimed at determining the genetic variation in key wood properties of Sitka spruce, with the overall objective of contributing to an improvement in the mechanical properties of this species.  Elspeth said of her visit “This was a fantastic opportunity to visit a world class laboratory to learn about SilviScan and obtain valuable data at a level of detail that would otherwise not be possible. I am extremely grateful to the team at Innventia for all their help, and to the EU funded Trees4 Future project for supporting the visit.”