Category: writing (Page 1 of 5)

Counter of La Picada de Pedro, showing lots of yummy food.

Breeding: simple interfaces, complex strategies

2024-06-14 / Luis

I found this text I wrote 20 years ago(*), part of a discussion document I prepared for a review of the radiata pine breeding strategy. Fixed a couple of typos, but I guess we still need pretty much the same thing. 🤔

“Different breeders value different things or, better put, they emphasise different values when developing breeding strategies. One of the reasons why many breeding programs struggle to achieve results is that they face an extremely complex list of activities, which are almost impossible to complete.

“A knee-jerk reaction from some breeders has been to recur to the KISS principle when developing breeding strategies. Unfortunately, the typical reaction has been “let’s create this dumb down strategy because it is simple to apply”. Bzzz. Wrong answer! What they have often done is to create a glorified “deployment strategy” that has almost no chance of surviving in the long term: that is, short term gain based on long term disappointment.

“Breeders need to realise that what needs to be simple is the _interface_ of the strategy. This means that we need a smooth interaction between the “theoretical animal” and the people that will be implementing it. This does not mean that the strategy is theoretically simple, but that the day-to-day activities are a breeze to complete.

“This type of interface requires the development—either in-house or through contracting the service—of tools that make life easy. For example:

Easy access to predicted breeding values, including desktop and online access. In addition, there needs to be an idea of the reliability of those predicted values if we are going to use them for deployment purposes.
Tools that make easy deciding what to select and which trees should be mated with each other (mate selection and allocation).
Protocols for deployment and tools for keeping control of the availability of genetic material.
Easy management of the interaction between improvement and deployment objectives.

“In summary, breeders need tools for dealing with the huge amount of data created by breeding and deployment activities, so it can be transformed into information.”

(*) Well, 19 years ago, this was 2005, but twenty sounds much better.

Home-made Tom yum with fishmeat balls on rice noodles.

Last day of teaching

2024-05-31 / Luis

…for this semester. I was really trying to keep my head above water, but gulp, glug, I kept on taking water in. There is a pile of marking and two exams coming my way in a few weeks. Anyone that could invite me to their home in Rarotonga? I need to recover from the always brutal semester steam roller.

Despite all the teaching, ideas keep on living for free in my head. Where to next? This is a common question when working in research: at some point the project has to be completed. Perhaps everything went well and the objectives were achieved, the findings were published, the student completed their PhD, etc. Or, perhaps, the whole thing was messy, or unattainable, or the experiment didn’t work out, or we run out of money.

Last weekend one of our students submitted his PhD, with chapters either published or somewhere in the publication pipeline. There is a sense of Where to next? From an implementation point of view, it is a matter of using the results, perhaps tweaking things here and there, but now it is an operational breeding programme issue. That topic will have to wait before I revisit it.

In conversations with a colleague in Chile (A) we talk ideas. Another colleague (B)informs us that our frontrunner was “too applied” for funding. It could make a significant practical difference, at least in my opinion, but the funding body has a strong preference for more “fundamental” research. The same funding body that does not like forestry too much, because it is “too slow”. When you put fundamental + forestry is hard to get results in 3 years of funding. Go figure.

B suggested another idea in which I am still getting my head around. Not quite my topic BUT I am a sucker for interesting problems and learning. Now reading about stuff that’s new for me, and see if I can connect it in a meaningful way to #breeding and #woodquality, and I don’t have to go all the way to Kevin Bacon’s degrees of separation.

I dislike (or should I say hate?) the push of Large Language Models (LLM) for writing. I can’t see the point, because Where is the terapeutic value of asking ‘write 300 words in Luis’ style’? I can, pardon, I need to write this because I can’t stop writing. I have to empty my head: it is 4:30 pm, Friday afternoon, the last day of teaching of this semester. Phew! And that’s how #academia feels today, ladies and gentlemen.

Muestras de pino radiata mostrando distorsión

Escogemos producir madera de baja calidad

2024-04-28 / Luis

Tercera patita(*). La semana pasada participé en tres reuniones en el éter (online dirían algunos), discutiendo investigación en diferentes aspectos del sector forestal, tanto en plantaciones como en bosque nativo. En una de ellas, alguien comentó acerca del bajo nivel de calidad de la madera: la proporción de madera de pino radiata que puede ser usado en la construcción es muy baja. ¿La razón? Es una especie de baja calidad.

Mi opinión es diferente: la crisis de los pequeños y medianos procesadores forestales es parcialmente autoinfligida por el sector forestal. No es que el pino radiata sea intrínsecamente malo para producir madera estructural y de apariencia; es mediocre, pero sirve. El problema es que dónde ha sido establecido, el tipo de material genético y el manejo silvicultural han sido optimizados para producir cantidad y no calidad. No solo por los pequeños y medianos, sino por los grandes también. La pulpa de madera domina el negocio y condiciona muchos otros aspectos de la industria basada en plantaciones de especies exóticas.

Por eso cuando escribía de qué y a quién subsidiamos, de que repetir actividades pasadas va a terminar repitiendo los resultados, tenía esto en mente. Por los últimos 50 años la industria a escogido producir madera de baja calidad y cualquier conversación de subsidios debe partir de esta base. No quiero estar el año 2074 teniendo esta misma discusión.

No faltará quién cuestione estas opiniones como negativas y pregunte ¿qué haces para cambiar las cosas? Bueno, las tres reuniones son para tres proyectos con esa intención.

(*) Término de cueca. Los dos post anteriores son ¿A quién subsidiamos en el sector forestal? y ¿A quién citamos en el sector forestal?

A dollop of Spanish

2024-04-22 / Luis

Most of my followers are English speakers (native speakers, second-language, third-language, nth-language speakers) so they could be confused by my occasional posts in Spanish. Well, I was born in Chile and grew up in Chile, Venezuela and Argentina so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have professional interests in Latin America. I care deeply about forestry and breeding as professional activities and have opinions, some would say too many opinions 😉, about improving the way we do things.

We should question the status quo, because “best practice” sometimes it is just “meh practice”. We need kaizen, continuous improvement, but we also need to reevaluate what we are doing and how we are doing it: discontinuous improvement (kaikaku). Obviously I also happen to have too many opinions about how forestry, and in particular forestry subsidies, should run in Chile, therefore, you patient reader get posts in Spanish.

As you might guess, some of the opinions will not win popularity contests but they are part of my “critic and conscience of society” academic role. I also have an interest in history and contexts, which might help to explain some of my comments.

Discussing some issues in forestry feels like riding a bicycle in tree canopies.

Stall owner talking with customer, surrounded by colourful produce. — Sunday market stall, Concepción, Chile.

¿A quién citamos en el sector forestal?

2024-04-22 / Luis

En mi post anterior preguntaba ¿A quién subsidiamos en el sector forestal?, lo que despertó una buena y civilizada discusión. Aprecio mucho la posibilidad de conversar así.

Hoy ví que Horacio Gilabert puso un link a una columna en El Mostrador que nos recordaba las palabras de Jacques Chonchol a la Asociación de Ingenieros Forestales en 1970. Un llamado a plantar árboles en tierras erosionadas por la eliminación de bosque nativo y sobreexplotación agrícola. Muy interesante, pero me preguntaba del contexto: rara vez uno escucha palabras de un fundador del Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario (MAPU) en la discusión forestal actual.

Es fascinante recordar lo que dijo Chonchol, Vicepresidente del INDAP durante el gobierno de Frei y Ministro de Agricultura de Allende (implementando la reforma agraria) con respecto a la necesidad de plantar árboles en Chile. Ahí ya hay más contexto: era plantar pero hacer otros cambios radicales.

Viene a colación recordar que el mismo Chonchol publicó el libro “Por una nueva reforma agraria para Chile” en 2018, en que el capítulo 14 llama a “evitar la extensión del monocultivo forestal” y el capítulo 12 a “evitar la nueva concentración y extranjerización de la tierra” y el capítulo 17 a “devolver a las comunidades mapuches las tierras usurpadas y desarrollar una política de mejoramiento económico y social de los pueblos indígenas”. Uff, ¿Mucho contexto? Quizás. El libro es asequible y conviene darle una mirada antes de invocar a Jacques Chonchol como un partidario de más plantaciones de pino y eucalipto.

Yo también estoy de acuerdo con que necesitamos más árboles en Chile pero—como decía en un comentario en el post original—no podemos repetir los subsidios del DL701 y esperar un resultado diferente. Necesitamos paquetes tecnológicos que conduzcan a un manejo forestal que produzca madera que califique de grado estructural si queremos madera para construcción en altura. En caso contrario, vamos a seguir alimentando el mercado de metro ruma, con poco valor agregado, pasando parte del subsidio a las empresas de pulpa y las PYMEs continuarán quebrando por falta de materia prima apropiada.

Podemos pensar en plantar algunas especies nativas; he escuchado cosas muy interesantes acerca de roble, raulí y su híbrido, viniendo de la Universidad Austral. Podemos usar otras especies exóticas también, que amplíen la cadena productiva con más alto valor. Ahí estamos hablando de subsidios interesantes y de un sector forestal más diverso. Buscando algo así entré a estudiar Ingeniería Forestal un día de marzo de los años ochenta en Antumapu.