- Resilient Forests
The Enhancing Resilience/Management of Pests and Diseases workstream aims to enhance the resilience of radiata pine forestry to biotic risks.
Research focuses on the development of tools for disease surveillance and monitoring, disease forecasting, integration of disease into growth models, optimised silvicultural practices and precision disease control.
Our key objective is to enhance the resilience of radiata pine forestry to biotic risks, ensuring increased forest productivity and profitability in an uncertain future. We will
- further the knowledge of key pine needle diseases, allowing quantification and mitigation of risk under climate change
- develop new sustainable and socially acceptable disease management tools, that support continued investor confidence and social licence to operate.
As part of the wider Resilient Forests programme, we will undertake laboratory and field research to:
- develop autonomous remote sensing tools for forest health monitoring and integration with phenotyping platforms
- produce a process-based epidemiological model for red needle cast (RNC) that can be used to predict and manage outbreaks, investigate disease risk under climate change, and as a framework for other diseases
- provide near real-time data on canopy micro-climate and tree physiology to quantify disease impacts on tree growth and wood quality to support cost-benefit analysis of management activities and to integrate disease into growth models developed in RA2
- together with the Productivity and Wood Quality research area, determine silvicultural practices that increase forest resilience to biotic risks.
- remote sensing protocols and pipelines to autonomously monitor forest health
- an epidemiological model for RNC that will underpin a decision support tool for forest managers
- recommendations for the operational control of red needle cast and other pine needle diseases
- recommendations on silvicultural practices that increase forest resilience to biotic risks
- progress towards operational socially and environmentally friendly alternative disease control tools.
Resilient Forests News
Red needle cast tool seminar – 24 Sept 2026
Red needle cast (RNC) is shifting from an unknown threat to a disease New Zealand foresters can actively manage. The RNC Manual and RNC Regional
2026 Youth Micro Innovation Challenge Winners Announced
Two Outstanding Forestry Innovations Awarded $10,000 Development Funding After an impressive field of entries from across New Zealand’s forestry sector, we are excited to announce
Apply for 2027 Forest Growers Levy Trust research funding
The Forest Growers Levy Trust (FGLT) application process for 2027 funding will take place in September this year as an open call, consistent with previous
Related searchable documents and reports
| Title | Date | Report Number | Author | Link | hf:doc_categories |
|---|