Wood Chemistry and Quality

Dear Colleagues,

Significant efforts have been made to improve wood quality by selecting optimal wood properties tailored to specific applications, resulting in the production of high-quality products. For instance, for pulp and paper, trees producing wood with a low extractives content, low amounts of and easily extractable lignin, and high polysaccharide (cellulose) content are desirable.

However, traditional chemical and physical characterization methods pose a significant challenge due to their high costs and labor-intensive nature. To address this, the integration of rapid, non-destructive techniques offers a transformative approach to characterizing the chemical and physical properties of lignocellulosic materials. This non-conventional and high-throughput techniques, such as near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with multivariate data analysis (e.g., PCA, PLS), have proven invaluable in analyzing wood's chemical composition, physical properties, and durability. The adoption of these techniques is driven by the need to process a large number of samples, a critical requirement for improving forest species to meet the increasing demand for wood products. Furthermore, these methods are essential for screening forest stands and populations, facilitating their optimized utilization for the selection process by reducing analysis time and lowering associated costs.

We invite studies with a focus on the biochemical content and composition of wood in order to expand the body of knowledge and to advance research in this domain.

Dr. José Carlos Carvalho Rodrigues
Dr. Ana Alves
Guest Editors

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