Abstract:

This paper studies the inheritances and correlations of wood quality characteristics among Populus ×'popularis' improved clones. The significant differences among clones were found in fiber length, fiber widness, ratio of length to widness, (double) wall thickness, wood specific gravity, widness of annual ring, tree height, DBH and volume.1. Higher reapitabilities, larger genetic coefficients of variation and genetic gains were found in fiber length, ratio of length to widness and wood specific gravity.2. No significant correlations were found between wood specific gravity and growth traits, wood specific gravity and fiber traits according to three methods of simple correlation, path analysis and canonical correlation analysis.3. Fiber length, tree height and DBH have larger direct effect to volume. Fiber widness and ratio of fiber length to widness have negativ direct effect to volume. 4. Two group traits of fiber traits and growth traits were significant correlation due to the correlations of fiber widness with volume; ratio of length to widness with tree height; fiber wall thickness with widness of annual ring.

Key words: Improvement of Populus ×'popularis', Inheritance, Wood specific gravity, Fiber, Path analysis, Canonical correlation analysis