June 22, 2026
Saying hey from Quebec City! For the past week, members of the BUDS lab travelled to Quebec City for the biannual North America Forest Genetics Society Conference. Hosted by Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, the conference brought together folks, largely those in academia, across the continent conducting work in forest/ tree genomics. Here are some highlights and photos from the Conference!
Workshops
- Lab members attended workshops on using software like CartograPlant, TreeSnap, conducting genomic inference work in R, and demographic modelling of tree species.
Oral Sessions
Oral sessions were plentiful and spanned topics including forest genomics, knowledge integration, resilience and adaptation, conservation and restoration, and tree breeding.
Poster Session
BUDs lab had three representatives presenting posters about their various work!
- Hanna Makowski (Post-Doc)
- Refugial history shapes genetic diversity across the range of sugar maple (Acer saccharum)
- Ben Wu (Undergraduate)
- Chloroplast Diversity Across Spatial Scales in Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra)
- Ben won the People's Choice Award for the Poster Session!
- Emma Land (PhD Student)
- Nonstructural carbohydrate dynamics in Quercus rubra tissues during the transition from endodormancy to ecodormancy
Field Trips & Tours
- Wood Sciences Building Tour
- The Wood Sciences building tour walked us through the various methods and capabilities of the wood science program at Laval University. One of two wood sciences programs in Canada, the department trains their students in not only developing new wood products, but also commercially testing them for practical and economic use. How cool?!
- Red Oak Provenance-Progeny Tests
- A red oak common garden was planted in Saint-Anselme 30 years ago to evaluate growth potential across seed sources of red oak for timber and economic purposes. Seed was collected across Quebec, Ontario, and the northeastern United States. Very cool to see a red oak common garden a bit farther down the line than ours!
- Valcartier Forest Research Station (VFRS) Tour
- VFRS spans 68 hectares and is located 33km north of Quebec City. We received a tour of the entire site, which includes provenance and progeny trials for Norway, white (both going on 50 years), black, and red spruce (both recently planted), white pine, and also temperature-free air control enhancement facility (think of a greenhouse outdoors). Very interesting to see these long-term progeny trials, as well as the diversity of forest that is filling them in!
Other highlights
- The lab enjoyed plentiful amounts of poutine <3.
- Downtown Quebec City is beautiful, with fantastic food and history.
