The difficulty in obtaining young plants with high diversity in forest nurseries has caused the loss of biological and genetic diversity in the restoration projects of degraded areas. This study presents an alternative to minimize this problem by using the technical rescue of young plants, which were obtained from two forest patches with different stages of ecological succession (average and initial), located in the municipal district of Carandaí, MG. Individuals with up to 60 cm heights were transplanted to a nursery and evaluated for six months. A total of 966 individuals belonging to 26 families, totaling 70 different species, were rescued with a larger percentage of these being observed in the patches with more advanced stages of succession. The average surviva lrate was 79.3%, differing statistically among patches, individuals' height and species. Individuals from the initial patch stage, as well as those with an inferior height of 40 cm, were characterized by their highest survival level. A high level of plant survival could be verified, both pioneer and non-pioneer species, many of them not commonly found in forest nurseries and, consequently, also absent in the restoration projects. Therefore, the technical rescue of young plants is a viable complementary strategy, with low cost, which can contribute to the increasing of diversity in forest nurseries and in forest restoration projects.
Forest restoration; Autoctone species and Recovery of degraded areas
