Quantitative determination of early wood decay

Wood decay caused by fungi continues to be a major problem for wood in service. The use off CCA is restricted and the ongoing development of new wood protecting systems is hampered by the long-term field tests currently in use. The actual mode of action o f the new generation of wood modification systems on fungal growth and the growth dynamics of decay fungi in wood remain poorly known. Hence, one needs to establish new accelerated test methods and new methods for early detection and quantification of dec ay. An important issue for further and increased use of wood is to develop tools for early estimation of service life. Molecular methods have proven to be a useful, but still poorly explored, tool within wood protection issues. The advantage with the qPC R method is that it both identifies and quantifies the target decay fungi. The qPCR method will first be optimised with regard to extraction procedure, accuracy and precision. qPCR based assays will be used for monitoring growth of decay fungi in test sam ples both in laboratory and field experiments. The molecular data will be compared with other evaluation methods, including Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) as a measure of early changes in wood polymer content. Microscopy will be performed to evaluate ho w results given by the indirect measures of decay are reflected in the direct appearance of the fungi inn the wood matrix. Different wood modifications systems will be tested to investigate: the different mode of action between the different treatments, c orrelation between early colonisation and durability and to compare laboratory and field test methods. The results will be used as tools and input data for early estimation of service life models.