Metodologie quantitative per la definizione di priorità di conservazione delle risorse genetiche in specie forestali

The lack of knowledge on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes make often uncertain to assign to genetic resources of forest tree species a "conservation/breeding value' based on functionality. On the other hand, given commonly scarce funding and consequently limited efforts allowed, it is often unfeasible to safeguard the species' biodiversity as a whole. It is therefore necessary to issue conservation priorities targeted on genetic stocks more prone to genetic depauperation/depletion and/or deserving more attention for breeding purposes. Indeed, it would be highly desirable to identify criteria and standardized methodologies with a solid scientific basis, providing helpful information on acting population dynamics and useful tools for the decision-making process. The main goals of this work were: (1) to identify the main gene pools in the current chestnut range; (2) to study the current distribution of chestnut biodiversity both within and among stands/pools; (3) to assign a conservation value based on quantitative measures to stands within each gene pool. As for the latter point, measures related to stand intrinsic biodiversity (gene diversity), stand extrinsic biodiversity (local genetic divergence), and to the dynamics of the biodiversity (effective population size) were considered.