High-tech imaging could improve cultivation of trees essential to Alberta's forestry industry

University of Alberta researchers have, for the first time, captured a much better view of what may be contributing to failures in lodgepole pine seed orchards—a tree essential to Alberta's forest industry. The researchers used synchrotron microcomputed tomography, an advanced 3D imaging method usually used in medicine, in a pilot study to visually explore why some pollinated female pine cones, known as conelets, are healthy while others die long before they fully develop.