The editors of this Forest Genetic Resources Training Guide wish to thank Jarkko Koskela and Barbara Vinceti for their contribution in identifying the need for the guide and for their continuous support during its preparation.

We acknowledge the important advice from a reference group of scientists at Bioversity International - Elizabeth Goldberg, Jozef Turok and Laura Snook - who at various stages supported this project.
This training guide was tested during several training events around the world. We would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback received from many students and their teachers, in particular Ricardo Alia and Santiago Gonzalez-Martinez from the National Institute of Agriculture and Food Research (INIA), Spain and Peter Kanowski from the Australian National University.

The production of the Forest Genetic Resources Training Guide would never have been possible without the financial support of the Austrian Development Cooperation through the project, ‘Developing training capacity and human resources for the management of forest biodiversity’, implemented by Bioversity International during 2004-2010. We would also like to thank the European Commission funded “SEEDSOURCE” project for additional financial support.
All cover illustrations were drawn by Rosemary Wise and the layout was created by Patrizia Tazza. We are grateful for their beautiful work.