Cryopreservation of In Vitro Tissues of Deciduous Forest Trees

Abstract

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO’s) international definition of a forest, as presented in
the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (GFRA-2000), sets the canopy cover requirement of 10% as the threshold value between
forest and other types of land. According to the latest preliminary information of GFRA published in 2005 by the FAO, there
are around 3.9 billion ha of forest in the world making up about one third of the total land area. Between 1990 and 2000 the
loss of forest land was 8.9 million ha per year and between 2000 and 2005, a little less than 7.3 million ha per year (GFRA-2005;
Finnish Statistical Yearbook of Forestry 2005). The area of natural forests, which accounts for 36% (i.e. 1423 million ha)
of the total forest area is decreasing around 6% per year (GFRA-2005).

Today forests are managed for many different purposes. Approximately one third are used to produce construction timber, pulp,
paper and other forest products. Maintaining biodiversity was the priority in 11% (i.e. 443 million ha) of the forests, and
the area of these forests has increased by 96 million ha since 1990. Around 9% of the global forests are intended for different
protection purposes, such as soil, groundwater or coast protection, to prevent desertification or to control avalanches (GFRA-2005).
However, in Africa 545 million m3 of wood is annually consumed for fuel which is more than six times the amount of wood consumed for all the other purposes
(FAO 2005).