In forest tree populations, the timing of budbreak (TBB) depends on several factors, both environmental and genetic. The genomic architecture underlying this trait is still not fully characterized. So far, common garden experiments have highlighted a few genomic regions with little heritability, while the whole spectrum of TBB variation observed in the wild still remains unexplored. We performed an in situ genome‐wide associat...

Purpose of Review In this review, we synthesise current knowledge on trade-offs among traits in key fitness dimensions and identify major research gaps with the intention of laying the groundwork for a rapid advance in tree breeding for multiple objectives as a key contribution to the sustainability of planted forests in the future. Recent Findings Trade-offs among growth, reproduction, defence, stress tolerance and product qu...

Whole genome characterizations of crop plants based on ancient DNA have provided unique keys for a better understanding of the evolutionary origins of modern cultivars, the pace and mode of selection underlying their adaptation to new environments and the production of phenotypes of interest. Although forests are among the most biologically rich ecosystems on earth and represent a fundamental resource for human societies, no a...

Microgeographical adaptation occurs when the effects of directional selection persist despite gene flow. Traits and genetic loci under selection can then show adaptive divergence, against the backdrop of little differentiation at other traits or loci. How common such events are and how strong the selection is that underlies them remain open questions. Here, we discovered and analysed microgeographical patterns of genomic diver...

A decade of genetic association studies in multiple organisms suggests that most complex traits are polygenic; that is, they have a genetic architecture determined by numerous loci, each with small effect‐size. Thus, determining the degree of polygenicity and its variation across traits, environments and time is crucial to understand the genetic basis of phenotypic variation. We applied multilocus approaches to estimate the de...

Motivation Trait variation within species can reveal plastic and/or genetic responses to environmental gradients, and may indicate where local adaptation has occurred. Here, we present a dataset of rangewide variation in leaf traits from seven of the most ecologically and economically important tree species in Europe. Sample collection and trait assessment are embedded in the GenTree project (EU‐Horizon 2020), which aims at ch...

Reconstructing the colonization and demographic dynamics that gave rise to extant forests is essential to forecasts of forest responses to environmental changes. Classical approaches to map how population of trees changed through space and time largely rely on pollen distribution patterns, with only a limited number of studies exploiting DNA molecules preserved in wooden tree archaeological and subfossil remains. Here, we adva...

Forest trees are an unparalleled group of organisms in their combined ecological, economic and societal importance. With widespread distributions, predominantly random mating systems and large population sizes, most tree species harbour extensive genetic variation both within and among populations. At the same time, demographic processes associated with Pleistocene climate oscillations and land‐use change have affected contemp...

A key aim of evolutionary biology – inferring the action of natural selection on wild species – can be achieved by comparing neutral genetic differentiation between populations ( F ST ) with quantitative genetic variation ( Q ST ). Each of the three possible outcomes of comparisons of Q ST and F ST ( Q ST > F ST , Q ST = F ST , Q ST F ST ) is associated with an inference (diversifying selection, genetic drift, uniform selectio...

Some 1339 trees from 48 Pinus pinaster stands were characterized by five chloroplast microsatellites, detecting a total of 103 distinct haplotypes. Frequencies for the 16 most abundant haplotypes ( p k > 0.01) were spatially interpolated over a lattice made by 430 grid points. Fitting of spatially interpolated values on raw haplotype frequencies at the same geographical location was tested by regression analysis. A range‐wide...