Canadian Forest Species Traceability System for Market Access: Assessing Potential and Challenge

Funding period: 2024-2028
Lead: Nathalie Isabel
Total GRDI funding: $266,000

The overall project goal is to enhance wood traceability in Canada by developing and applying genomic tools across multiple tree species. The project objectives are: to expand and adapt an existing genomic assignment pipeline to various Canadian tree species and compare assignment accuracy, marker numbers, and algorithm performance across them; to identify species-specific SNP panels that enable precise geographic origin determination; to develop a standardized protocol for extracting DNA from processed wood products and test the effectiveness of the identified markers; and to evaluate the complementarity of genomic and metabolomic methods for enriching reference databases. Together, these efforts will provide reliable, tamper-proof tools for species and origin identification. Socio-economic benefits include strengthened legality and provenance verification, greater supply chain transparency, and enhanced credibility of forest certification systems—supporting sustainable forest management and reinforcing Canada’s status as a trusted global supplier of forest products.