New Forests (2012) 43:13–29

DOI 10.1007/s11056-011-9263-y

Growth and wood basic density of acacia hybrid clones

at three locations in Vietnam

Le Dinh Kha • Chris E. Harwood • Nguyen Duc Kien •

Brian S. Baltunis • Nguyen Dinh Hai • Ha Huy Thinh

Received: 11 August 2010 / Accepted: 30 March 2011 / Published online: 10 April 2011
 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Field trials testing a total of 27 clones of the interspecific hybrid Acacia
mangium 9 A. auriculiformis and seedling controls of the parental species were estab-
lished at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh in the north of Vietnam and Long Thanh in the south. At
both Ba Vi and Yen Thanh there were significant (P \ 0.001) differences in height and
diameter at breast height (DBH) among 22 tested clones at 4 years. At Long Thanh, twelve
hybrid clones did not differ significantly in DBH at age 3 years, but did (P \ 0.001) at age
5 years. At the two northern sites the acacia hybrid clones had significantly greater DBH
than control seedlots of the parental species. At Long Thanh, DBH of the hybrid clones and
A. mangium was similar, with a genetically improved seedlot of A. mangium displaying the
best DBH. Mean wood basic density at breast height of the acacia hybrid clones was
539 kg m-3 at Yen Thanh at age 8 years, and 473 kg m-3 at Long Thanh at age 5 years;
density for A. mangium at Long Thanh was only slightly lower than the hybrid clones at
461 kg m-3. Linear regressions of Pilodyn penetration (PP) at breast height on wood basic
density explained 60% of the variance in density of treatments (clones and control seed-
lots) at Yen Thanh and 36% at Long Thanh. There were significant differences between
hybrid clones in PP at all three trial sites. Clonal DBH performance was not strongly
correlated across the three trial sites; Pearson correlations of clone mean DBH between
pairs of sites ranged from -0.47 to 0.20. Clonal rankings for PP were more stable, with
Pearson correlations between pairs of sites ranging from r = 0.71 to 0.78.

Keywords Acacia mangium 9 auriculiformis hybrid 

Clone-by-environment interaction  Pilodyn

L. Dinh Kha  N. D. Kien (&)  N. D. Hai  H. H. Thinh

Research Centre for Forest Tree Improvement, Forest Science Institute of Vietnam,
Tu Liem, Hanoi, Vietnam
e-mail: nguyen.duc.kien@fsiv.org.vn

C. E. Harwood
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Private Bag 12, Hobart 7001, Australia

B. S. Baltunis
CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

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Introduction

The development of fast-growing selected clones of the natural interspecific hybrid

combination A. mangium Willd. 9 A. auriculiformis A. Cunn. ex Benth. (hereafter
referred to as acacia hybrid) is a major contribution to plantation forestry and the rural
economy in Vietnam (Kha 2009). By the end of 2009, the area of acacia hybrid plantations
was estimated at 232,000 ha by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
(MARD, unpublished data), making acacia hybrid the most important plantation tree
variety in Vietnam. Wood of acacia hybrid has been found to be suitable for export
woodchips, kraft pulp production in Vietnamese pulp mills, and also for sawing to produce
furniture components (Kha 2001). Acacia hybrid is also planted on a large scale for
pulpwood production in Karnataka State, India (Amanulla et al. 2004) and plantations are
under development in Malaysia and other SE Asian countries (Mohd. Ghazali et al. 2007).
Pure-species plantations of A. mangium and A. auriculiformis have developed as
important plantation species in Vietnam, following seed introductions from natural prov-
enances in Papua New Guinea and north Queensland in the second half of the twentieth
Century (Nghia and Kha 1998; Hai et al. 2008a). Commencing in 1992, acacia hybrid
clones were developed from occasional hybrid individuals identified in young A. mangium
plantations in Vietnam (Kha 2001). To date, most acacia hybrid genotypes selected for
clonal testing appear to be first-generation A. mangium 9 auriculiformis hybrids, pre-
sumably arising from open-pollination by A. auriculiformis fathers growing near the A.
mangium mother trees that supplied the seed used to establish the plantations. Many of the
acacia hybrid genotypes identified in the A. mangium plantations are not acceptable for
production forestry, because they are unsatisfactory with respect to one or more important
traits such as ease of rooting, growth, branch size, stem form or pest and disease sus-
ceptibility (Kha 2001). Phenotypically superior candidate acacia hybrid individuals are
coppiced, brought into clonal propagation via rooted stem cuttings, followed by clonal
testing of those clones that are easy to propagate. Candidates under clonal testing are
captured in micropropagation to enable mass-production of clonal hedge plants. Clone
trials at multiple locations are established to rank the clones for survival, growth, stem
form and branching, resistance to pests and diseases and wood properties (Kha 2001).
Well-tested, outstanding individual hybrid clones are then approved by MARD for use in
production plantations.
From the first set of clonal tests in the 1990s, six hybrid clones with high productivity,
health and stem quality (clone numbers BV10, 16 and 32, and TB 3, 6 and 12) were
approved by MARD for commercial use in the year 2000. These selected clones were
shown to significantly out-perform pure-species seedlots of A. mangium and A. auriculi-
formis in field trials at trial locations in lowland northern, central and southern Vietnam
(Kha 2001). On a productive site at Bau Bang, in Binh Duong province in southern
Vietnam, with intensive cultivation, productivity of the best acacia hybrid clones in a
5-year rotation at close spacing (3 m 9 2 m) has exceeded 30 m3 ha-1 year-1 (Kha et al.
2005). At Ba Vi in northern Vietnam on shallow and infertile soils and with a cool and dry
winter season, productivity of acacia hybrid can reach 15 m3 ha-1 year-1 while that of
A. mangium on these sites is only 9 m3 ha-1 year-1 (Dao 2003).
Ideally, a large clonal plantation estate needs to be supported by a program of breeding
and clonal development and testing to supply many improved production clones. This
provides a safeguard against potential susceptibility to emerging pests and diseases, pro-
vides clones adapted to the range of target planting environments, as well as yielding
ongoing improvement in growth performance and wood properties (Burdon and Aimers-

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Halliday 2006). The Forest Science Institute of Vietnam (FSIV) and other research
agencies in Vietnam have therefore developed additional production clones. By 2008,
MARD had approved a total of nineteen acacia hybrid clones for use in operational
plantations. However, only six (BV10, 16, 32 and 33, and TB6 and 12) are preferred by
plantation growers (FSIV, unpublished data).
When selecting clones for deployment, the relative weightings to be placed on traits that
are important for the target production systems must be considered. Surveys of enterprises
involved in acacia hybrid growing and processing in Vietnam (PH Hai and CE Harwood,
unpublished data) showed that smallholder growers, who manage about half of the acacia
plantations in Vietnam, typically sell their crops to buyers based on stand volume. Export
woodchip mills purchase logs by fresh weight and sell woodchips based on dry weight of
the chips they sell, giving them an interest in wood density and log moisture content as
well as volume. Pulp mills value the percentage of pulp yield obtainable per unit of dry
wood, in addition to basic density and volume (Greaves et al. 1997). Profitability of
sawmilling and subsequent processing of acacia wood in Vietnam is affected not only by
log size and straightness, but by the extent of knot-related defects, wood stiffness and
hardness, and the proportion of more durable heartwood, which affect the value of sawn
boards produced. It is therefore apparent that different interest groups would differ in the
relative weightings they give to different traits, when ranking a set of candidate clones.
However, increased volume and higher basic density at harvest are desirable traits for all
stakeholders, as they increase the volume of acacia wood and its value for all applications.
Harvest ages for acacia hybrid plantations range from about 5 years, for pulpwood
rotations on the most productive sites in Vietnam, to about 12 years for plantations on less
productive sites or plantations that aim to produce a high percentage of logs of sufficient
size for sawmilling. An assessment age of 3–5 years for clone trials therefore corresponds
to approximately half rotation age for commercial plantations in Vietnam, depending on
the region and the production system. Selection traits (Greaves et al. 1997) measured at this
age which can be expected to correlate closely with harvest-age stand volume include
survival, stem diameter at breast height (DBH) and total tree height. Wood basic density of
breast-height disks or cores or pilodyn penetration (PP) at breast height taken at around
half rotation-age usually correlate well with whole-tree basic density at harvest age for
temperate eucalypt species (Greaves et al. 2003), although these relationships have been
less well-studied for tropical acacia species (Hai et al. 2008b).
The extent of clone-by-environment interaction in Vietnam has recently been explored
for A. auriculiformis. In field trials of a total of 130 clones of this species at three sites in
northern central and southern Vietnam, Hai et al. (2008a) found low genotypic correlations
for growth traits between the sites, particularly between the southern site and the two other
sites. This result indicated that clone-by-environment interaction for growth was important
and would need to be taken into account in developing a clonal deployment strategy for
this species.
This paper reports the performance of a total of 27 selected acacia hybrid clones from
FSIV’s clonal testing programs, in clonal tests at three locations in northern and southern
Vietnam. Pure-species seedling controls of A. mangium and A. auriculiformis, raised from
seedlots of known and appropriate origin, were included as control treatments in the trials.
The acacia hybrid clones under test were selected by FSIV from a much larger number of
candidate acacia hybrid genotypes identified as natural hybrids in young A. mangium
plantations, the best of which were captured for initial clonal testing. We examine the
following questions:

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• Are there significant differences among the acacia hybrid clones under test, for the
selection traits of height, DBH and wood density as indicted by PP?
• How reliable is PP for predicting wood basic density at breast height?
• Are there strong phenotypic correlations among different selection traits at the clone-
mean level, for example between DBH and PP?
• To what extent do the rankings of the tested acacia hybrid clones for DBH and PP vary
across different regions of Vietnam, indicating clone-by-environment interaction?
• How do the acacia hybrid clones perform, compared to the pure-species controls?
Implications of the results obtained from the trials are considered for ongoing breeding,
clonal selection and deployment strategies for acacia hybrid clonal forestry in Vietnam.

Materials and methods

Trial locations, and clones and seedlots tested

The three test sites were located in lowland regions of northern and southern Vietnam
(Table 1). They represented site types widely available for acacia hybrid plantations in
Vietnam. The two trial sites in northern Vietnam were on sloping land with relatively
shallow soils, with some site degradation through loss of topsoil during previous land use.
The site in the south represents a more productive soil type, and a climate more conducive
to year-round growth of tropical acacias.
The trials at BaVi and Yen Thanh used randomised complete block designs with three
replicates, and ten-tree line treatment plots, while the trial at Long Thanh used three

Table 1 Details of the three trial sites

Ba Vi Yen Thanh Long Thanh

Latitude (N) 21070 18590 10470

Longitude (E) 105260 105270 106590
Altitude (m) 60 44 35
Soil Ferralitic clay loam Ferralitic clay loam Sandy alluvium
with heavy laterization
Mean annual 1,680 1,620 2,070
rainfall (mm)
Mean annual 23.2 24.3 26.1
temperature (C)
Site preparation Machine-ripped Hand cultivated Ploughed
Planting time Sept 2000 Nov 2000 July 2005
Fertilizer (per tree) 3 kg cattle manure 3 kg cattle manure ? 500 g organic
? 0.3 kg superphosphate 0.3 kg superphosphate bio-fertilizer ?
per tree ? 0.2 kg NPK per tree 100 g NPK per tree
Design
No. of replicates 3 3 3
No. of trees per plot 10 10 49
Spacing (m) 392 4 9 2.5 4 9 2.5
No. of clones tested 23 23 12

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replicates of 49-tree (7 9 7) square plots. Most of the replicate boundaries at the three sites
were surrounded by external perimeter rows of acacia hybrid clones or other acacia species
at the trial spacing, although this was not universally the case. Planting pits, of size
40 9 40 9 40 cm, were cultivated by hand, and fertilizer was placed in the partly-filled pit
which was then back-filling with soil prior to planting. Fertilizer prescriptions varied
among the trials, following local operational practice. Trials were hand-weeded twice per
year for at least the first 2 years.
A total of 27 acacia hybrid clones were tested (Table 2). These clones had been selected
by FSIV as outstanding in initial clone screening trials. All of the clones were identified as
natural hybrids within plantations or nursery seedlots raised from A. mangium seed sources
and are most probably the offspring of A. mangium mothers and A. auriculiformis fathers.
At Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, 23 clones were tested, 22 of these being in common to the two
sites, while at Long Thanh only twelve clones were tested, three of these being tested only
at this site. Clones named BV were selected from A. mangium plantations at Ba Vi in
northern Vietnam whereas clone series TB and T were selected from A. mangium plan-
tations at Dong Nai and Binh Duong provinces in southern Vietnam.
For controls, one pure-species seedlot of each of A. mangium and A. auriculiformis was
included at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, while three different seedlots of A. mangium were
included at Long Thanh. The A. auriculiformis control comprised a bulk seedlot from the
Coen River, Queensland provenance, which has proved to be an outstanding A. auriculi-
formis provenance in trials in Vietnam (Hai et al. 2008b). Of the A. mangium control
seedlots, two were from unpedigreed selectively thinned Seed Production Areas (SPAs) in
Vietnam. The Pongaki SPA at Ba Vi, northern Vietnam was developed from a 2 ha stand
planted with the Pongaki (Papua New Guinea, PNG) provenance of A. mangium, selec-
tively thinned during stand development from initial stand density of about 1,000 stem-
s ha-1 to retain about 200 superior trees per hectare. The Dong Ha SPA in central Vietnam
was developed in a similar way from a 2 ha A. mangium stand established using seed from
many superior provenances from PNG and far north Queensland, together with seed
from first generation seedling seed orchards of these provenances developed in Australia.
The Dong Nai seedlot of A. mangium was a bulk collection from unimproved plantations of
A. mangium of unknown provenance origin from Dong Nai province, southern Vietnam.

Table 2 Acacia hybrid clones and seedling controls tested at the three trial sites
Location Clones and seedlots tested

Ba Vi AauriCRa, AmanPb, BV5, BV10, BV16, BV29, BV32, BV33, BV71, BV72, BV74,
BV75, CQ58, CQ62, T1, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, TB12, TB3, TB6, TB39
Yen Thanh AauriCRa, AmanPb, BV5, BV10, BV16, BV29, BV32, BV33, BV71, BV72, BV73,
BV74, BV75, CQ58, T1, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, TB12, TB3, TB6, TB9
Long Thanh AmanPb, AmanDNc, AmanDHd, BV10, BV15, BV16, BV33, BV71, BV72, BV73,
BV74, BV75
a
A. auriculiformis Coen River provenance
b
A. mangium Pongaki seed production area
c
A. mangium Dong Nai land race
d
A. mangium Dong Ha seed production area

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Measurement and assessment

Tree height (HT) was measured to the nearest 0.1 m using height poles at ages 3 and
4 years, and estimated using a Vertex hypsometer at later ages. Diameter at breast height
(1.3 m) over bark (DBH) was measured to the nearest mm using diameter tapes. Pilodyn
penetration (PP) was assessed at all three sites. Approximately 20, 15 and 34 trees per
treatment (i.e. clone or seedlot) were assessed for PP at Ba Vi, Yen Thanh and Long
Thanh, respectively. After removal of a bark window, two pilodyn shots, 90o to one
another, were taken from each tree at breast height. The mean value for PP for each tree
was calculated for subsequent analysis. A number of trees (three trees per treatment at Yen
Thanh, and six trees per treatment at Long Thanh) that had been sampled for PP were
subsequently felled and breast-height wood disks were obtained for basic density deter-
mination using the standard method OM-258 of TAPPI (1998).
At Long Thanh, stem volumes over bark of 89 individual trees (17 A. mangium trees and
72 acacia hybrid trees) at age 5 years were calculated by summing frustum volumes
determined from diameter measurements made every 2 m up the stem to small-end
diameter of 6 cm. Individual tree volume was predicted from the following regression:
VOL ¼ 0:0013  DBH1:8953
where VOL is stem volume over bark to small-end diameter of 6 cm in m3, and DBH is
diameter at breast height over bark in cm. The regression accounted for 82% of the
variance in stem volume. Volume of each tree surviving to age 5 years was predicted using
the regression, and plot volumes were calculated by summing individual tree volumes of
all surviving trees in the plot, and expressed on a per-hectare basis.

Statistical analyses

Linear model (1) was used to analyse the data sets at the individual-tree level, in order to
test the significance of treatment effects and estimate the performance of treatments.
yijk ¼ l þ REPi þ TREATMENTj þ REP:PLOTij þ eijk ð1Þ
where yijk is the observed phenotypic measurement, l is the overall mean, REPi is the fixed
effect of replicate, TREATMENTj is the fixed effect of clone or seedlot treatment,
REP:PLOTij is the random plot effect (10-tree row plots at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh; and
7 9 7 square plots at Long Thanh), and eijk is the residual error. The significance of fixed
effects was tested with Wald-type F-statistics (Kenward and Roger 1997) in ASReml
(Gilmour et al. 2006).
The trait of VOL (wood volume per hectare) was analysed at the plot level using a
simpler fixed-effects model (2):
yijk ¼ l þ REPi þ TREATMENTj þ eij ð2Þ
where yij is the observed plot volume, l is the overall mean, REPi is the fixed effect of
replicate, TREATMENTj is the fixed effect of clone or seedlot treatment and eij is the
residual error.
For traits where the treatment effect was significant, Best Linear Unbiased Estimators
(BLUE) were estimated for each clone and seedling control: these are equivalent to least-
squares means. This analysis was then repeated with the pure-species control treatments
excluded, to test the significance of differences among the hybrid clones.

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Pearson correlations among the BLUE clone estimates were calculated for each paired-
trait comparison within each trial as an approximate indication of the genotypic correlation
between traits (numbers of clones tested were too low for genotypic correlations to be
realistically estimated). Additionally, across-trial Pearson correlations were estimated in
the same way to indicate the between-site genotypic correlations for each trait. The data for
the pure-species seedling control treatments were excluded when these Pearson correla-
tions were estimated, because in most cases pure-species values differed substantially from
those of the hybrids and would have dominated the correlation estimates, whereas interest
in the correlations centred on the hybrid clones.
Clonal mean repeatabilities (H^C2 ) for the assessed traits at each site were estimated from
a mixed effects model in which clone and plot within replicate were treated as random and
replicate as fixed.
^2clone
r
H^C2 ¼ ^2rep:plot
r
;
^2e
r
^2clone þ
r r þ rt

where r = the number or replications and t = the harmonic mean number of ramets per
clone per replicate. Pure-species control seedlots were excluded from these calculations of
clonal repeatability.
Mean values for wood basic density were calculated for each treatment at the Yen
Thanh and Long Thanh sites, and the relationship between breast-height disk wood basic
density and PP was examined by calculating the linear regressions of density on PP, at the
treatment (clone or seedlot) mean level.

Results

Survival and growth

Survival was good in all three trials, with 4-year site mean survival of 82.7% and 84.9% at
Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, respectively, and 3-year site mean survival of 88.3% at Long Thanh
(Table 3). Survival had declined to 68.7% at Ba Vi at age 9 years, 77.5% at Yen Thanh at
8 years, and 83.5% at Long Thanh at 5 years. The decline in survival at the first two sites
was partly due to line plots of A. auriculiformis and A. mangium and some of the slowest-
growing hybrid clones being over-topped by adjacent rows of faster-growing hybrid
clones, leading to suppressed growth and poorer survival.
There were significant (P \ 0.001) differences among treatments for HT and DBH at all
three trial sites except for the 3-year measure of these traits at Long Thanh (Table 4). Eight
acacia hybrid clones and one control seedlot of A. mangium were tested at all three trial
sites (Table 2). Early height growth of these eight acacia hybrid clones was fastest at Long
Thanh, averaging 4.7 m per year up to age 3 years, and slowest at Ba Vi, where annual
height increment up to age 4 years of these clones was only 3.0 m, while the annual
increment at Yen Thanh was 3.5 m up to age 4 years. The Pongaki SPA seedlot of
A. mangium had slightly slower early height growth at all three sites, relative to the mean
of these eight hybrid clones. This difference was most pronounced at Ba Vi, where
A. mangium was 26% below the average of the clones at age 4 years, and least pronounced
at Long Thanh where it was only 9% below the average at age 3 years. At the two northern
sites, A. auriculiformis was significantly inferior in early height growth to the acacia hybrid
clones and to A. mangium (Fig. 1). Treatments differed significantly (P \ 0.01) in their

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Table 3 Mean values for survival, height (HT) and DBH, and pilodyn penetration at the three trial sites
Age Ba Vi Yen Thanh Long Thanh

Survival (%) 3 – – 88.3

4 82.7 84.9
5 – – 83.5
8 – 77.5 –
9 68.7 – –
HT (m) 3 – – 13.3
4 10.7 13.5 –
8 – 18.2 –
9 14.6 – –
DBH (cm) 3 – – 10.8
4 9.2 10.1 –
5 – – 14.2
8 – 15.2 –
9 14.8 – –
Pilodyn (mm) 5 – – 12.0
8 – 9.8 –
9 8.8 – –
Basic density(kg m-3) 5 – – 474
8 539 –

per-hectare volume at age 5 years at Long Thanh (Table 4). Estimated volume mean
annual increment (MAI) for the acacia hybrid clones at age 5 years averaged 34 m3 ha-1,
with clone BV10 having the highest MAI at 39 m3 ha-1, and clone BV75 the lowest at
30 m3 ha-1 (Table 5). Corresponding MAI estimates for A. mangium seedlots were 31, 38
and 44 m3 ha-1 for the Dong Nai, Pongaki and Dong Ha seed sources respectively.
Clonal mean repeatabilities were 0.59 or higher for HT at 4 years and DBH at age
4 years at the two northern sites and for DBH at Long Thanh at age 5 years (Table 6),
although they were low and non-significant for HT and DBH at 3 years at Long Thanh.
Age-age Pearson correlations for DBH (Table 7) were high at all three sites; 0.96 at Ba Vi,
0.92 at Yen Thanh and 0.88 at Long Thanh, indicating rankings of clones obtained at the
earlier ages (4, 4 and 3 years) were reliable indicators of rankings at the later ages of 9, 8
and 5 years, respectively. Age-age correlations for HT at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh were
similarly high.

Pilodyn penetration and wood basic density

There were significant differences in pilodyn penetration among acacia hybrid clones at all
three sites (P \ 0.001 at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, P \ 0.01 at Long Thanh, Table 4), and
clonal mean repeatabilities for PP were high at all three sites, ranging from 0.70 to 0.79
(Table 6). Pearson correlations between DBH at age 4 or 5 years and PP ranged from
-0.09 at Yen Thanh to 0.21 at Ba Vi, indicating that clonal values for DBH at age 4 or
5 years (the most reliable indicator of growth) and wood basic density as indicated by PP
were not closely related (Table 7).

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Table 4 Significance of differ-

Trait Treatment differences
ences among acacia hybrid clone
treatments (pure species controls
excluded) (a) Ba Vi, ages 4 and 9 years
DBH-4 (cm) ***
HT-4 (m) ***
DBH-9 (cm) ***
Height-9 (m) ***
Pilodyn-9 ***
(b) Yen Thanh, ages 4 and 8 years
DBH-4 (cm) ***
HT-4 (m) ***
DBH-8 (cm) ***
Height-8 (m) ***
Pilodyn-8 ***
(c) Long Thanh, ages 3 and 5 years
DBH-3 (cm) n.s.
HT-3 (m) n.s.
n.s., not significant DBH-5 (cm) ***
* 0.01 \ P \ 0.05; Vol per ha (m3) **
** 0.001 \ P \ 0.01; Pilodyn-5 **
*** P \ 0.001

6
Annual increment (m)

4
hybrid clones
3 mangium
auriculiformis
2

0
Ba Vi Yen Thanh L ong Thanh

Fig. 1 Mean annual height increment for the first 4 years (at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh) or the first 3 years (at
Long Thanh) for eight acacia hybrid clones in common to the three trials, A. mangium (Pongaki SPA) and
A. auriculiformis (Coen River provenance). Bars above A. mangium show critical difference (P = 0.05)
between height increments of individual treatments in each trial

Wood basic density at breast height across all treatments averaged 539 kg m-3 at
8 years at Yen Thanh, and 474 kg m-3 at 5 years at Long Thanh (Table 3). Only three
trees of A. mangium were assessed for density at Yen Thanh, so the density of this species
could not be realistically estimated there. The linear regressions of treatment (clone or
seedlot) mean basic wood density at breast height on treatment mean PP at both Yen Thanh
and Long Thanh were significant (P \ 0.001), but accounted for only 60 and 36%,
respectively of the variance in treatment density (Fig. 2).

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Table 5 Estimates of mean

Taxon Seed source or clone Mean annual volume
annual increment of wood vol-
increment (m3 ha-1)
ume over bark to small end stem
diameter of 6 cm at Long Thanh,
at age 5 years A. mangium Dong Nai 31
SPA Pongaki 38
SPA Dong Ha 44
Acacia hybrid BV10 39
BV15 28
BV16 35
BV33 33
BV71 34
BV72 31
BV73 34
BV74 34
BV75 30
TB11 33
TB12 34
TB15 36
Standard error of 3
difference of means

Table 6 Clonal mean

Trait H^C2
repeatabilities (H^C2 )
(a) Ba Vi ages 4 and 9 years
DBH-4 0.95 ± 0.02
HT-4 0.96 ± 0.02
Pilodyn-9 0.79 ± 0.07
(b) Yen Thanh ages 4 and 8 years
DBH-4 0.59 ± 0.15
HT-4 0.63 ± 0.14
Pilodyn-8 0.78 ± 0.08
(c) Long Thanh ages 3 and 5 years
DBH-3 0.07 ± 0.47
HT-3 –
DBH-5 0.59 ± 0.20
Pilodyn-5 0.70 ± 0.15

Performance and ranking of clones and controls at different trial sites across Vietnam

At the two northern sites, Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, the pure species controls were clearly
inferior to all or most of the acacia hybrid clones for four-year DBH (Fig. 3). However, at
Long Thanh the A. mangium seedlot from the Dong Ha SPA displayed the largest DBH

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Table 7 Pearson correlations between predicted clonal values for different traits of acacia hybrid clones
at each site

D4 H4 D9 H9

(a) Ba Vi
H4 0.96
D9 0.96 0.86
H9 0.97 0.94 0.94
P9 0.21 0.17 0.20 0.16

D4 H4 D8 H8

(b) Yen Thanh

H4 0.82
D8 0.92 0.56
H8 0.72 0.75 0.71
P8 -0.09 -0.02 0.12 -0.11

D3 H3 D5

(d) Long Thanh

H3 0.40
D5 0.88 0.49
P5 0.17 -0.31 0.08

D#, DBH at measurement age; H#, height at measurement age; P#, pilodyn penetration at measurement age

(Fig. 3) and wood volume per hectare (Table 5) at age 5 years, exceeding all the hybrid
clones, and had low PP, indicating relatively high basic density (Fig. 3). At this site, the
Dong Ha SPA seedlot of A. mangium had significantly greater DBH than did the Dong Nai
and Pongaki SPA seedlots of this species (Fig. 3).
Clones BV10, BV 32, BV 33 and BV75 had DBH above the site mean for acacia hybrid
clones, and PP below the site mean (indicating higher than average basic density) at both
Ba Vi and Yen Thanh. These clones were selected as superior clones, indicated by solid
squares in Fig. 3. Three of these four clones (BV10, BV33 and BV75) were also tested at
Long Thanh (Fig. 3c), where all three were below-average for PP, but clone BV75 was
below-average for DBH and wood volume per hectare. Thus, clones BV10 and BV33 rank
among the fastest-growing acacia hybrid clones at all three trial sites and appear to have
average or above-average wood density.
Site–site correlations in PP rankings for the acacia hybrid clones (r = 0.71–0.78,
Table 8) were relatively strong, and clearly better than the correlations between sites in
4–5 year DBH (-0.54 to 0.33) and 3–4 year HT (-0.44 to 0.63). The site–site correlations
between Ba Vi and Long Thanh are poorly estimated, being based on only seven clones in
common to the two trials, similarly the correlations between Yen Thanh and Long Thanh is
based on only eight clones in common. At Ba Vi and Yen Thanh, the A. auriculiformis
control seedlot had relatively large PP, compared to most acacia hybrid clones, indicating
lower wood basic density (Fig. 3).

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24 New Forests (2012) 43:13–29

600

Basic density (kg/cu m)

2
R = 0.60
550

500

450

400
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Pilodyn penetration (mm)
(a) Yen Thanh
520
2
basic density (kg/cu m)

R = 0.36
500

480

460

440

420
9 10 11 12 13 14
pilodyn penetration (mm)
(b) Long Thanh
Fig. 2 Pilodyn penetration as a predictor of wood basic density of clone and seedlot treatments at a Yen
Thanh and b Long Thanh. The percentage of variance explained by the linear regression of treatment mean
basic density on treatment mean pilodyn penetration is shown for each site

Discussion

Growth

The trend of faster early growth of both acacia hybrid and A. mangium with decreasing
latitude (from 21070 at Ba Vi to about 10470 at Long Thanh) is commonly observed in
trials and operational plantations of A. auriculiformis, A. mangium and acacia hybrid in
Vietnam and is consistent with the same trend for A. mangium evident in provenance trials
in many tropical countries (Harwood and Williams 1991). While the volume estimates for
Long Thanh are approximate only, being developed from a DBH-volume regression that
accounted for only 81% of variance in stem volume of 89 sampled trees, they confirm the
high wood production potential of acacia hybrid clones and genetically improved seedlots
of A. mangium on productive sites in southern Vietnam, as previously reported for acacia
hybrid by Kha et al. (2005) and Kha (2009). The higher rates of fertilizer application used
at the two northern sites were clearly less important in determining stand growth rates than
were the inherent site differences in soil and climate.

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New Forests (2012) 43:13–29 25

Fig. 3 Treatment means for 12

DBH and pilodyn penetration

PP (mm) at 9 years
(PP) at the three trial sites. hybrid
11
Horizontal and vertical bars at
lower left hand side of graphs clone BV10
hybrid (best
show critical differences 10
clones)
(P = 0.05) between treatments
auriculiformis
for DBH and PP, respectively. 9
Hybrid clones shown in bold are
clones with above-average DBH mangium
8
and below average PP at both Ba
Vi and Yen Thanh; only three of
these four clones were tested at 7
Long Thanh 4 6 8 10 12
DBH at 4 years (cm)
(a) Ba Vi
12
PP (mm) at 8 years

11

hybrid
10
hybrid (best clones)
auriculiformis
9
mangium

8
Clone BV10

7
5 10 15
DBH at 4 years (cm)
(b) Yen Thanh
14
PP (mm) at 5 years

13

clone BV10 hybrid

12
hybrid (best
clones)
mangium
11
A. mangium
Dong Nai A. mangium
Dong Ha SPA
10
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
DBH at 5 years (cm)
(c) Long Thanh

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26 New Forests (2012) 43:13–29

Table 8 Across-trial correlations indicating stability of clonal performance across sites for diameter at
breast height (DBH) height (HT) and pilodyn penetration (PP), with measurement age in years shown for
each trait

Ba Vi (DBH4) Yen Thanh (DBH4)

(a) DBH
Yen Thanh (DBH4) 0.33
Long Thanh (DBH5) -0.54 0.20

Ba Vi (HT4) Yen Thanh (HT4)

(b) HT
Yen Thanh (HT4) 0.63
Long Thanh (HT3) -0.44 0.28

Ba Vi (PP9) Yen Thanh (PP8)

(e) Pilodyn
Yen Thanh (PP8) 0.71
Long Thanh (PP5) 0.78 0.76

The Dong Ha SPA seed source had the largest DBH of the three A. mangium seedlots tested
at Long Thanh. This was expected given that it was developed from a genetic base comprising
superior seed orchard progenies and the best natural provenances, and had been selectively
thinned, retaining the best 25% of trees for seed production. This seedlot displayed the largest
DBH of all treatments at Long Thanh, and there was no clear DBH advantage of the acacia
hybrid clones over the other two A. mangium seed sources tested there. Stem form and bark
thickness, as well as DBH, affect under-bark wood volume, and there may be systematic
differences in these traits between A. mangium and the acacia hybrid, the latter tending to have
thinner bark, so the slight growth advantage of genetically improved A. mangium over acacia
hybrid at Long Thanh suggested by its larger DBH should be treated with caution. None-
theless, the result at Long Thanh suggests that the acacia hybrid clones under test do not
outgrow the best seed sources of A. mangium in southern Vietnam.
The acacia hybrid clones clearly out-performed the Pongaki SPA seed source of A.
mangium and the Coen River natural provenance of A. auriculiformis at the two northern
sites. The majority of the clones had four-year HT and DBH that exceeded that of the pure
species by more than the critical difference for significance (P = 0.05). This result concurs
with the findings of earlier trials comparing the first hybrid clones and pure-species controls in
northern Vietnam reported by Kha (2001). Because competition effects between adjacent line
plots become more important with increasing age, treatment rankings for HT, DBH and
survival at the 8- and 9-year measures are considered to be less reliable than those obtained
from the 4-year measures at the Ba Vi and Yen Thanh trials, particularly at Ba Vi where initial
spacing was closer at 3 9 2 m than in the other trials which used 4 9 2.5 m. Inter-plot
competition effects tend to accentuate early-age treatment rankings for growth (White et al.
2007), so age-age correlations for HT and DBH must also be interpreted with caution.

Wood basic density

At Long Thanh, mean density of seventeen A. mangium trees sampled was slightly lower
than the average of 72 acacia hybrid trees tested there (461, compared to 476 kg m-3).

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New Forests (2012) 43:13–29 27

The lower density at Long Thanh, compared to Yen Thanh, may result in part from
environmental differences between the two sites, with much faster growth at Long
Thanh, but another contributing factor is the tendency for density to increase with age.
Wood basic density of acacia hybrid at Ba Vi was shown to increase with age up to
8 years by Kim et al. (2008), and in A. mangium from 6 to 12 years in Sumatra,
Indonesia (Siagian et al. 1999). Increase in density with age for A. auriculiformis can
also be inferred from results of a study in a 5‘-year-old clonal trial of this species in
southern Vietnam (Hai et al. 2009). The mean breast-height density of 40 A. auriculi-
formis clones was 520 kg m-3 for heartwood and 560 kg m-3 for sapwood, laid down at
a later stage in the growth of the trees. The overall density at breast height of
540 kg m-3 for 5‘-year-old A. auriculiformis clones reported by Hai et al. (2009) was
substantially higher than the breast-height mean for twelve acacia hybrid clones at
practically the same age reported here, 476 kg m-3.
Pilodyn penetration for the A. auriculiformis control seedlot was above the average for
acacia hybrid clones at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh (Fig. 3), suggesting lower wood basic
density. This unexpected result may be due in part to the suppression of diameter growth of
A. auriculiformis in the last four years of stand growth at Ba Vi and Yen Thanh (annual
radial increment from age 4 years onwards being only 0.2–0.3 cm). The pilodyn pin
(10-11 mm mean PP at age 8 or 9 years) would have penetrated a higher proportion of
lower-density A. auriculiformis wood laid down at an earlier age, relative to that of hybrid
clones, which displayed much faster radial growth from year 4 onwards. Wood basic
density of eight-year-old trees of six of the acacia hybrid clones, growing in a separate trial
at Ba Vi, increased from pith to bark by as much as 200 kg m-3 from the centre of the stem
to the outermost wood (Kim et al. 2008).
Treatment means for basic density used in the density-PP regressions were not pre-
cisely estimated, with only 3 trees per treatment sampled at Yen Thanh and 6 trees per
treatment at Long Thanh. This imprecision may have contributed to the substantial
unexplained variance in the pilodyn—basic density regressions evident in Fig. 2. More
systematic studies are needed to determine the number of ramets per clone, using either
direct measurement of density on wood disks or cores, or a regression of density on PP,
that must be sampled, and the relationship between breast-height and whole-tree basic
density, to attain a desired level of precision in the estimation of clonal wood basic
density (Raymond and MacDonald 1998; Kim et al. 2008). Nevertheless, the regressions
demonstrate that PP provides an approximate guide to the ranking of acacia hybrid
clones for wood basic density, with greater mean PP generally indicating clones of lower
basic density.

Implications for breeding and clonal deployment

The relatively good DBH growth of almost all of the acacia hybrid clones under test is
evident from Fig. 3. Hybrid clone means for DBH at 4 or 5 years span a range of only
2–3 cm at each site, with the exception of two clones (CQ58 and CQ62) which grew
very slowly at Ba Vi. Pre-screening of a much larger initial set of hybrid individuals
during candidate selection and initial screening trials conducted by FSIV has eliminated
many inferior hybrid genotypes which would have performed poorly, if they had been
included in the clone trials reported here. For example, the seven clones in the series
BV5-BV33 tested here were the best-performing clones from a total of 60 promising
two-year-old acacia hybrid individuals identified in A. mangium plantations near Ba Vi
(Kha 2001). Similarly, the five clones in the series BV71-BV75 tested here were chosen

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from approximately 100 acacia hybrid seedlings that were identified as hybrids in the
nursery at Ba Vi from progeny of a bulk seedlot of A. mangium, and grown in a field
trial to age 2 years, prior to selection and cloning of the most promising hybrid phe-
notypes. Wider ranges in clonal DBH performance were reported in three clonal tests of
A. auriculiformis candidate clones that had been less intensively pre-screened (Hai et al.
2008a).
The lack of any obvious relationship between DBH and pilodyn at the clone level
evident in the three trials, as indicated by the low Pearson correlations between DBH and
PP, suggest that it is quite feasible to breed and select hybrid clones displaying both rapid
growth and high wood basic density in a scaled-up breeding program. However, the
numbers of acacia hybrid clones that have been well-tested for both traits are small, and it
is possible that a negative genetic correlation might emerge in a large breeding and testing
program, as has been found for Pinus radiata D. Don. (Wu et al. 2008). Substantial genetic
variation in growth and wood basic density of A. auriculiformis has been demonstrated in
progeny trials (Hai et al. 2008b) and clone trials (Hai et al. 2008a), and significant genetic
difference in growth rate among three Vietnamese seed sources of A. mangium has been
demonstrated at Long Thanh in the present study. Controlled crossing between A. auric-
uliformis and A. mangium parent trees that have high genetic rankings for both growth and
wood basic density or setting up hybridizing seed orchards that incorporate a number of
selected superior genotypes of the two parent species to produce natural F1 hybrid off-
spring via open pollination are two possible ways to effectively produce a range of new
hybrid genotypes that can be tested to identify clones with both superior vigour and basic
density.
Clones BV10 and BV33 have remained in use in Vietnam for over 15 years, since first
tested in 1992, without obvious loss of vigour, relative to the newer hybrid clones such as
BV75 that were identified 5–10 years later. Management of these first production clones in
tissue culture by regular re-capture from vigorously growing sapling ramets has prevented
any major loss of vigour through maturation. This ability to maintain clones of acacia
hybrid in a vigorous state for over a decade without detectable loss of rooting vigour and
growth potential is an important advantage for clonal forestry with acacia hybrids, enabling
thorough testing of individual clones prior to their mass deployment for a prolonged
period, and contrasts with ageing and loss of vigour observed in clones of many coniferous
tree species (Burdon and Aimers-Halliday 2006).
Inter-site correlations of clonal rankings for DBH and PP suggest that wood density
rankings of clones are likely to be more stable across contrasting sites than are growth
rankings. A similar conclusion was reached by Kien et al. (2010), who studied early growth
and wood basic density of a larger set of clones of E. camaldulensis at three sites in
southern, central and northern Vietnam. Although the number of acacia hybrid clones
tested remains small, it appears that a deployment strategy should be regionally based, with
some clones deployed to particular regions rather than across the entire country, to better
exploit clone-by-environment interaction for growth. Nevertheless, some clones such as
BV 10 and BV33 tested here display good and stable growth above-average wood density
across all three trials (Fig. 3).

Acknowledgments We thank staff of the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam, in particular the Research
centre for Forest Tree Improvement, for assistance with trial establishment, management and assessment.
The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research supported the study. Drs Chris Beadle, Rod
Griffin and Garth Nikles provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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New Forests (2012) 43:13–29 29

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