Water repellents as environment-friendly treatments are gaining their popularity as non-biocidal solutions for wood protection. One of the most important water repellents for wood besides waxes and organosilicon compounds are drying oils. Tung oil is one of the best performing oil. However, tung oil, similarly as other oils, does not penetrate deeply into wood, due to its high viscosity. In order to improve penetration of oil into wood, vacuum-pressure procedure was applied. Species chosen for this study are important in Central Europe, namely, sweet chestnut heartwood, European larch heartwood, Scots pine heartwood and sapwood, and Norway spruce heartwood wood. Distribution of oil in wood after treatment was measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which was already being successfully applied in wood science. The aim was to employ the MRI technique to elucidate influence of treatment method and wood species on distribution and penetration of tung oil. MR imaging was found suitable method for observation of oil penetration as well. What is more, if the intensity of signal is high enough, the MR imaging revealed not only intensity of the signal, but also distribution and the shape of specimens. Also early-wood and late-wood areas can be seen. In sweet chestnut traheids can be seen through whole specimens.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 2582665In the frame of the proces 16+ was Slovenian forestry-wood product chain introduced to the delegation of Chinese forestry minister with special emphasis on the promising technologies.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 2574217The majority of the European wood is not durable in terms of resistance to fungal decomposition. Since fungi are the main drivers of this process, the wood has to be protected for outdoors use. In this study we tested the influence of different wood protection treatments – thermal modification and alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ, Silvanolin©) biocide – on the structure of fungal communities in Norway spruce (Picea abies). Furthermore, we compared the structure of fungal communities in Norway spruce to those of two naturally more durable tree species native to North America: Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and Western red cedar (Thuja plicata). Wood samples were exposed to environmental conditions and collected after one and two years. Wood sawdust was obtained by drilling into the wood samples and DNA was extracted from 50 mg of wood sawdust using a commercial kit. For amplification of fungal ITS2 region, we used forwad ITS3 primer mix and reverse ITS4ngs primer (Tedersoo et al., 2015), all modified to contain specific Illumina adapter. In a separate PCR reaction, each primer was barcoded with 8-base Nextera® tags to allow sample multiplexing. The amplicons were sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform (300 bp paired-end sequencing). Open source scripts and pipelines, such as QIIME (Caporaso et al., 2010) and USEARCH (Edgar, 2010) were used for data analysis. Preliminary results indicate high diversity across all the samples with a significant community shift in ACQ treated Norway spruce.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 4485542