significant impacts on productivity, 

 profitability, or policy. They are 

 simply samples to illustrate the 

 diversity of the contributions made 

 by southern university research. 

 For the most part, examples are 

 limited to programs which have 

 been established long enough for 

 results to be transferred to, and 

 applied by, users. 



Forestry 



Members in the North Carolina 

 State and Florida cooperatives are 

 now producing enough improved 

 stock as a whole to be self- 

 sufficient; members of the west 

 gulf cooperative at Texas A.&M. 

 are now meeting half of their 

 annual planting stock requirement 

 with genetically improved stock 

 (Weir, Goddard, and van Buijtenen 

 and Lowe, personal 

 communications). 



Genetics and Tree Improvement — 



Large-scale tree-improvement 

 research and development have 

 been carried out through 

 university-industry-State forestry 

 organization cooperatives at 

 Florida, North Carolina State, and 

 both the Texas Forest Service and 

 Texas A. & M. The 29 cooperators 

 in the North Carolina State 

 program have planted 3,000,000 

 acres with genetically improved 

 stock estimated to produce a 7- to 

 12-percent increase in cubic 

 volume yield when trees reach 25 

 years of age over yields from 

 woods-run source material. On Site 

 Quality 60 land, the increase in 

 after-tax stumpage value per acre 

 is estimated to run from $242 to 

 $434 ($598 to $1,072 per ha) with 

 an increase in investment costs of 

 $4.79 to $15.46 per acre ($11.84 to 

 $38.20 per ha) depending on seed- 

 orchard yield levels. After-tax 

 rates of return on investments in 

 tree-improvement programs are 

 estimated to range from 14.25 to 

 19.75 percent (Talbert et al. 1985; 

 Weir, personal communication). 



Nursery Management — Nineteen 

 forest-industry companies, 12 State 

 forestry organizations, and 1 

 USDA Forest Service nursery — in 

 the aggregate some 90 percent of 

 the South's forest-tree nursery 

 production capacity — belong to the 

 Auburn University Southern 

 Forest Nursery Management 

 Cooperative. Application of 

 research on weed control is saving 

 cooperators a total of $2.25 million 

 annually in costs for hand weeding 

 and mineral spirits. Seven of nine 

 herbicides now in use were 

 registered as a result of 

 Cooperative research. 

 Development of improved 

 fungicides has reduced losses of 

 planting stock to fusiform rust 

 from as high as 20 percent to one- 

 half of 1 percent (South and 

 Gjerstad 1985 unpubl.; South, 

 personal communication). 



Forest Fertilization — Cooperatives 

 were established in this research 

 area at the University of Florida in 

 1967 to focus mostly on slash pine 

 and at North Carolina State in 1979 



37 



