GROWTH AND REPRODUCTIVE ABILITY OF ISOLATED SIBERIAN CEDAR CLONES IN THE OPTIMUM ZONE

The revival of an important economic resource of the country – pine nuts – is hampered by the lack of the necessary amount of raw material for laying industrial high-yielding nut plantations on large areas. They are genotypes-clones of plus trees, which have confirmed high yields during clone test-ing. An effective way to solve an urgent problem is to identify them at an early age in the zone of ecological optimum of Siberian cedar. In the low and middle highlands of the North-Eastern Altai (800-1100 m above sea level), 7-year-old vaccinations revealed the specifics of growth and seed production of 49 clones of plus trees on 12 and 17-yearold rootstocks, reflecting their degree of genetic conditioning. In the zone of ecological optimum of Siberian cedar, the possibility of early detection of high-yielding clone genotypes with mandatory simultaneous testing of clone progeny on rootstocks of different ages is substantiated.