Format: ORAL

Anastazija Dimitrova1,2, Angela Balzano3, Enkhchimeg T.Chimgee4, Ser-Oddamba Byambadorj4,5, Batkhuu Nyam-Osor4, Gabriella S. Scippa1, Maks Merela3, Donato Chiatante6, Antonio Montagnoli6

1 Department of Bioscience and Territory, University of Molise, Pesche, Italy 2 Hans Em Faculty of Forest Sciences, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia 3 Department of Wood Science and Technology, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia 4 School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 5 College of Agriculture and Life Science, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea 6 Department of Biotechnology and Life Science, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy

The Joint Korea-Mongolia Green Belt Project relies on the afforestation of Mongolias arid and semi-arid areas, as a tool for ecosystem rehabilitation. Since wood formation depends on two main factors, i.e., temperature and water availability, it is reasonable to assume that the extreme climatic conditions in the Mongolian steppe would affect wood formation and the vascular cambium activity of the trees. However, until now, most studies on wood formation have considered the temporal and Mediterranean regions. The present study focuses on vascular cambium and wood characteristics of two species used in the afforestation in the Mongolian steppe, Ulmus pumila, and Populus sibirica. In detail, we analyzed the vascular cambium characteristics (number of cambial cells and length of cambial cells stack) and wood characteristics (length of last wood increment, earlywood, and latewood xylem area) as a response to 12 combinations of irrigation and fertilization treatments, both in the stem and the root. The vascular cambium characteristics and the length of the last wood increment in P. sibirica tend to increase with the increase of the water availability in all three fertilization treatments. However, there is not much difference between the two higher levels of irrigation, which indicates the possibility of reducing irrigation efforts. In U. pumila our results indicate that the vascular cambium characteristics and the length of the last wood increment are often not too different between the rainfall conditions and the highest irrigation regime. In both species, the treatments did not impact the early- and latewood xylem area, indicating that they might not be suitable wood characteristics for analyzing the trees response in semi-arid regions. Thus, using a familiar approach of microcore acquisition and analysis, in both stem and root, could be of value for species and management selection, which are linked with afforestation success in semi-arid areas.