The YAN Climate Ready Revegetation trial is in its third year. Eight volunteer landholders across the Yass Valley are hosting trial sites. Tubestock planting occurred in Autumn/Winter 2021, and involved three species: Eucalyptus melliodora (Yellow Box), Acacia deanei (Green wattle) and Dodonaea viscosa (Slender Hop bush). Half the plants of each species were grown from locally sourced seed, while the other half were grown from seed sourced from other provenances.
The underpinning theoretical concept in the Climate Ready Project is that seed from a variety of provenances gives greater genetic diversity, which is good for natural selection and plant survival in an increasingly hotter and more extreme climate. Funding for the seed used in this project has been made possible with funding from the Landcare Australia Michael King grant. The scientific question that the trial has been designed to answer is:
Is there a difference in short-term survival of plants from local seed provenance, compared with plants from non-local seed provenance?
In November of 2021 and 2022, audits were undertaken of plant survival across all trial sites. The results show that, to date, there is no real difference between the survival of plants grown from local and non-local seed.
Out of a total of 1710 plants planted across the 8 trial sites, 1375 (80%) are still growing. The Acacia deanei is proving to be the fastest grower, however the Dodonaea viscosa was the first to flower in November 2022. Eucalypts have generally had the strongest survival, followed by the Acacias, followed by the Dondonaeas. The Dondonaeas have not done well in the wet conditions of the past few wet seasons, though when planted on a well-drained ridge, they have survived well.
To maintain interest in our project Bowning-Bookham nursery manager and trial landholder is having a workshop on their property on Sat 4 March: Where to Start? Revegetation Farm Walk and Talk at their Wattle Valley property. If you would like to attend this open day please access the below link.
If you would like more information on the YAN Climate Ready project a series of links are provided below.
https://yan.org.au/projects/climate-ready-revegetation-project
https://landcare.nsw.gov.au/groups/yass-area-network-of-landcare-groups-inc/yan-climate-ready/