Provenance and family variation of Pinus caribaea var. hondurensis from Guatemala and Honduras, grown in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela

Pinus caribaea var, hondurensis (Senecl) Barr. & Golf is a tropical pine th at naturally occurs in lowland areas of Belize, Fl Salvador, Guatemala, Hon duras, Nicaragua, and eastern Mexico. It has been one of the most studied t ropical pines and the one with the most commercial importance in Brazil. Th e objective of this work was to select the best provenances for plantations and best trees in families for the establishment of seed orchards. For tha t a trial with five provenances and 47 open-pollinated families was planted near Planaltina, Federal District, in the Cerrado Region of Brazil. The pr ovenances tested were Poptun (Guatemala), Gualjoco, Los Limones, Fl Porveni r and Santa Cruz de Yojoa (Honduras) and assessed at 12 years of age. Poptu n and Gualjoco had larger volume, and Los Limones and El Porvenir the lowes t incidence of forks and foxtails. Individual tree heritabilities for volum e, stem form and branch diameter were 0.34, 0.06, and 0.26 respectively. Mo re than 90% of the trees had defects, common in unimproved I! caribaea. Sel ection criteria for quality traits need to be relaxed in the first generati on of breeding to allow for larger genetic gains in productivity. Results f rom this test compared with p. caribaea var. hondurensis trials in other Br azilian, Colombian and Venezuelan sites suggest that provenance x site and family x site interactions are not as strong as in other pine species.