Division III.5 Evaluation for the conifer main tree species

Following the leaf-sampling procedure, from each tree several branches (5 branches as small as possible but having at least the current year's needles (C-needles) and previous year's needles (C+1-needles)) shall be pruned from the sun-exposed portion of the upper part of the crown. If this part of the tree is not accessible, use part of the branches collected for foliar analysis.

The chlorotic mottling will be scored for each needle age class (from current year's (C) to 3-year old (C+2) needles) in percentage of total surface affected by locating all needles of one age class forming a surface, and then the corresponding score (classes) for that percentage will be assigned, according to the following table.

The scores shall be produced per needle class; thus trees (and species) will have separate scores for the needles of age-classes C, C+1, C+2, etc. The final score of an individual tree shall be the score corresponding to the average injury percentage of a given needle year-class for that tree (this is obtained by averaging the injury percentages of all individual needle-whorls of a given age-class on that tree); similarly, the final score for the plot shall be the score corresponding to the average of the injury percentages of all sampled trees.