(16 Dec 2021) LEAD IN:
How green is your Christmas tree?
A four-year project in Denmark, Europe's largest exporter of festive firs, is aiming to crossbreed a new type of tree that's more resilient to milder temperatures and more sustainable, requiring less fertiliser and pesticides.

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In the Danish countryside, lush green Nordmann fir Christmas trees are beginning their long journey to families' homes.
Wholesaler Arbodania in the Danish town of Lundby (80 kilometres south of capital Copenhagen), exports almost one million Christmas trees a year, it's the third largest producer in the country.
It's a long process - tree saplings are put into the ground some nine years earlier, eventually flourishing into firs for families' living rooms. The trees can grow up to two centimetres a day.
"We have all years of age of Christmas trees from one age old Christmas trees to eight or nine-year-old Christmas trees, and all levels below," says owner Bernt Johan Collet.
"This way this permits us, of course, to have a fixed supply every year."
Festive firs are big business in Denmark, the Scandinavian country is Europe's top exporter, annually shipping about ten million trees overseas. Most here head to Germany, France, and Italy.
"We have very nice maritime climate, that's to say we are surrounded by the ocean, and the ocean, of course, is excellent at keeping a constant temperature, so it keeps summer temperatures down and winter temperatures up. And that's what our trees like," says Bernt Johan Collet.
"We are ideally placed out in the Atlantic Ocean to make super Christmas trees."
While growers say the Nordmann fir, used by most Danish producers, is proving resistant to warmer temperatures and drought, even the Christmas tree industry is considering how climate change and the drive to be more sustainable will impact its business.
According to the Carbon Trust, an artificial tree used over multiple years is better for the environment than buying a new, commercially grown tree every year. Those that are slow grown and use no fertiliser are preferable, it says.
The Danish Christmas Tree Association says twenty natural trees are more climate-friendly than one single artificial tree.
"Two surveys in U.S. have shown that it is sustainable, at least compared to a plastic tree or fake tree," says Claus Jerram Christensen, managing director of the Danish Christmas Tree Association.
"It's true we accumulate some 18 kilograms of carbon dioxide per tree. But we also use some bringing out fertiliser and everything, so I think it's a plus, but how big a plus, I don't know for sure in Denmark, for now."
In this greenhouse at the University of Copenhagen, researchers are studying different trees' genotypes, attempting to breed a new crossover Christmas tree that will be more resilient to milder temperatures and more sustainable, requiring less fertiliser and pesticides.
Extreme weather can cause varying tree growth, needle loss, and in some cases of extreme drought, dead crops.
"What kills trees is extremes," says senior researcher Ulrik Brauner Nielsen.
"It could be a very extreme droughts that we had a couple of years, and we could also have... if we get some very severe like late winter frost, late spring frost, we could also have some problems."
Brauner Nielsen is crossbreeding the popular Nordmann fir - from Georgia's Caucasus Mountains - with the Turkish fir, a rarer, coniferous tree that's shown a more natural resistance to infestation by sap-sucking insects, called adelgids.
"I think the customers to a higher extent want this more sustainable tree."

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