In forestry research you have to know how to wait, but without wasting time: María Elena Gauchat has been working at INTA for almost 30 years to obtain trees that produce more and better wood

Gauchat is a forestry engineer and since 1998 she has worked at INTA Montecarlo, in Misiones. He arrived there after a journey that began quite far from the missionary pine forests. She was born in Rafaela, Santa Fe, into a family linked to agricultural activities. When he had to choose a race, he decided to avoid the most obvious paths nearby. Instead of Agronomy or Veterinary Medicine, he went to Santiago del Estero to study about forests and wood. It was a first break, he recalled. The final break came during a study trip to Misiones. I really fell in love. I said: this is my place in Argentina, he said. There was another detail that was attractive to someone who came from the Pampas region: there the trees grew much faster. Then he finished his degree and settled in one of the main forestry centers of the country. Later he found within that profession a specialty that forces him to look even further: genetics. "I always had a predilection for genetic improvement. If I had been an agronomist, I think I would have gone that way," explained Gauchat. In an annual crop, like soybeans or wheat, the results of many decisions can be seen in a matter of months. With a tree the time scale is different. To obtain and compare new materials, the specialist explained, you must first select the individuals, carry out the crosses and multiply them. Just producing the seed can take around 18 months. Added to the time spent in the nursery, they can go two years before the trial even reaches the field. And thats where the wait just begins. You install the trial and you have to wait until the fourth year to measure the trees and start saying: this one looks good, this one doesnt, he explained. Therefore, in forest genetics, losing a work campaign can be much more expensive than simply waiting twelve months. If a seed was not collected or a cross was not carried out at the scheduled time, the entire process is moved forward one year. “You have to have everything very planned,” Gauchat summarized. And what is someone looking for who spends a good part of his life selecting pine trees? The first thing seems quite obvious: that they produce more wood. But many other attributes soon appear among the objectives of improvement. Trees with straighter and less conical stems are sought, because this shape then improves the use of the logs in the sawmill. The crown is also observed: it is important that it has fewer branches, that they are smaller and that their angle of insertion favors a wood with fewer defects. Then you have to look even further inside. We have to get down to a microscopic level, explained the researcher. There, characteristics of the wood fibers come into play and, depending on the species and the productive destination, other qualities. In Pinus elliottii, for example, it can also be selected for resin production. At first glance, a plantation may appear to be made up of hundreds of identical trees. For a forest geneticist, exactly the opposite happens. “They are all the same until you start looking at them in a little more detail,” said Gauchat. That variability between individuals is precisely the raw material of his work. The specimens that express the desired characteristics are identified, they are crossed in a controlled manner and then the long evaluation process begins again. One of the results of this work is the hybrid pine developed locally from the crossing of two species: Pinus elliottii var. elliottii as mother and Pinus caribaea var. hondurensis as a parent. The idea of ??the hybrid was not born in Argentina. The innovation of the local team was to work with materials selected and adapted to the conditions of the region. To do so, INTA contributed its genetic improvement program and worked together with a forestry company in Misiones that had a significant population of Pinus caribaea var. hondurensis. From there they selected specimens and carried out numerous crosses. According to Gauchat, about 400 different families emerged from this work, which were distributed in about 20 trials in Mesopotamia. The desired result was not only a tree that grew quickly. The researcher described the hybrid as a pine with a cylindrical trunk, with few branches and a more open crown. This last characteristic allows for greater light entry and also makes it interesting for silvopastoral systems, where grass must grow under the trees that the animals then use. That is to say, genetic decisions made many years before end up defining whether there will be enough light under those pine trees to raise cows. Almost three decades after arriving at INTA Montecarlo, María Elena assures that she never regretted that decision to leave Rafaela to study a different career. I think I found my way and that I am in my place, she summarized. She also remains convinced that the Argentine forestry sector still has a lot to do. Perhaps that is why, after so many years selecting trees that others will end up using much later, he has already incorporated a rather particular rule: in this forest you have to know how to wait, but never waste time.