Comment by maddiehalla

Good questions! 1. We are still studying tradeoffs. Given the biochemical mechanism (how we change the trees), we are essentially increasing the amount of energy going to growth and not changing any fundamental ratios between lignin and cellulose. Think of this as similar to when humans go into ketosis :) We have seen some evidence of increased temperature resistance and wilt resistance but not enough data yet to come to any conclusions. 2. Empress trees grow very fast but there is not much of a market for their wood because it is very light. this means it is harder to get landowners to plant these trees. Poplar trees are commonly planted for environmental services like cleaning up of abandon mine lands and loblolly pines which are commonly used for saw timber. The varieties of trees we start with have been studied in the field for decades and we have access to that field trial data to start with.