In situ and Ex situ Conservation of Commercial Tropical Trees - ITTO

285In order to quantify the effectiveness of tree improvement program, asimulation was conducted by setting the projected gain to zero i.e. improvedyield equals to either operational-yield-model or model-minus 20%. Thissimulation showed that tree improvement program reduced the NPV by only5% and 10% for operational-yield-model and model-minus 20% respectively.On the other hand, the program was able to increase the NPV ranging from22% to 47% for combination of single-site selection with operational-yieldmodeland multiple-sites selection with model-minus 20% respectively. Theseresults shows that tree improvement program is very cost effective.There are two important considerations that arise from the study. Thefirst, the advantage of multiple-site selection is hardly achieved without joininga tree improvement cooperative. Other than providing the materials, thecooperative will ensure the use of uniform test design that allow to conduct amultiple-sites selection. On the other hand, taken across all sites, more than13,500 half sib individuals and 5 conservation banks were included in the study.This number of trees sampled and the percentage of progeny that survive wouldbe adequate to capture the genetic diversity in a certain population of G.arborea. More studies are needed to verify this effectiveness, but a study byDvorak et al. (1999) in large and small population of Pinus tecunumanii thatusing a similar sampling approach was found to be effective.The second is the fact that the financial analysis only included thebenefit from volume increase. There are two other benefits inherent withimprovement, i.e. quality improvement and greater resistance to insects anddiseases. In developing the selection index, all inferior trees were independentlyculled. This would actually increase the wood value by having better straightness,smaller limbs, and better boles. Better resistance to insects and diseases mightbe expected since only healthy trees were included in the selection. As suggestedby Zobel et al. (1978), tree improvement may be the only way to ensure woodproduction in the case of insects and diseases attack. These benefits maysignificantly increase the financial feasibility of tree improvement that were notquantified in this study.ReferencesBalocchi, C. E. 1990. CAMCORE Tree Improvement Program. CAMCORE Bulletin on TropicalForestry No. 7. College of Forest Resources, North Carolina State University. Raleigh, NC.USA.Bank Indonesia, 1999. Suku Bunga Maksimum Dalam Rangka Penjaminan, Periode tanggal 11-17 Oktober 1999. Humas Bank Indonesia, Biro Gubernur, Jakarta, Indonesia.CAMCORE, 1997. 1997 Annual Report. North Carolina State University, Raleigh. USA.Champion, H. G. & Seth, S. K. 1968. A Revised Survey of Forest Types of India. Manager ofPublication, India.Chudnoff, M. 1979. Tropical Timbers of The World. US Forest Product Lab., Forest Service,