The plant nursery raises 1 million seedlings per year of more than 100 different native trees, and while some species are easy to produce, many others pose more of a challenge. Often, natural limitations such as the availability of seeds can hamper efforts. For other species, germination is tricky. Cloning techniques - which cultivate plant cuttings that are genetically identical to the mother plant - avoids these issues. A workshop organized by our partners AES Brasil and CEIBA and given by Prof. José Mauro Santana da Silva of the Federal University of São Carlos was held at the nursery in December to train staff in cloning techniques. Now, they’ll start testing a number of species to see if cloning is a good approach for them - and if so, it’ll be the method of choice from now on!