Welcome to Lesson 1: Topic 1 – What is genetic diversity?
Genetic diversity refers to all the genetic variations that exist within a species. It is a measure of variation in genetic code and corresponding heritable traits amongst individuals or populations of the same species.
As forest practitioners, we must understand that the physical characteristics of a tree is a result of the genotype growing in a particular environment and that we can not always make assumptions about the genetic quality of a tree from the physical appearance alone.