Colouring vertices of triangle-free graphs without forests

The vertex colouring problem is known to be NP-complete in the class of triangle-free graphs. Moreover, it is NP-complete in any subclass of triangle-free graphs defined by a finite collection of forbidden induced subgraphs, each of which contains a cycle. In this paper, we study the vertex colouring problem in subclasses of triangle-free graphs obtained by forbidding graphs without cycles, i.e., forests, and prove polynomial-time solvability of the problem in many classes of this type. In particular, our paper, combined with some previously known results, provides a complete description of the complexity status of the problem in subclasses of triangle-free graphs obtained by forbidding a forest with at most 6 vertices.