Integrating cloned and seedling progeny for rapid improvement of teak (Tectona grandis) Andrew N. Callister 12 1 Treehouse Consulting, 2 Campbell Road, Denmark, Western Australia, Australia 6333 2 Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management, University of Western Australia, Albany, Western Australia, Australia 6331 Abstract The rapid and accurate identification of superior clones for commercial deployment has recently become an important goal of many teak (Tectona grandis) improvement programs. This paper presents a comparison of three strategies for identifying superior clones from within an initial collection of 200 teak families while initiating the subsequent generation. Due to increased accuracy of predictions of genetic merit, cloned progeny testing is expected to enable a more rapid and accurate selection of clones for pilot-scale deployment and the development of block- plots for commercial-scale testing compared with a strategy that commences with seedling progeny testing. However, the best results are expected from an integration of both approaches into a unified strategy. The integrated cloned and seedling progeny strategy involves taking a proportion of germinants from each family into a second year of propagation to develop them into cloned progeny. The remaining germinants are tested as seedling progeny. Benefits of this strategy include: 1) early clone deployment at 8 years after initiation, 2) refinements to the clonal deployment population at 12 years based on wood property evaluations, 3) the use of results from cloned progeny to improve breeding value estimates and genetic gain in the second generation, and 3) the integration of genetic information across generations and propagule types. Keywords cloned progeny test, genetic gain, genetic values, tree improvement strategy,