A study by Beaulieu and collaborators has shown that needle concentration in acetophenone aglycons (secondary metabolites involved in resistance to spruce budworm) could be genetically improved in white spruce using genomic selection, and that this trait could be integrated to multi-trait selection also implicating growth and wood quality (full article here).

A study by Depardieu and collaborators relying on the retrospective analysis of tree-ring and genetic data in 43 natural populations of white spruce has shown that growth resilience after extreme drought events was under genetic control, and that this trait represents a promising avenue for breeders to improve spruce resistance to drought in the context of climate change (full article here).