Behavior of the brown-rot fungus Gloeophyllum trabeum on thermally-modified Eucalyptus grandis wood

Abstract

In this study, we aimed evaluate the behavior of the brown-rot fungus Gloeophylum trabeum and white-rot fungus Pycnoporus sanguineus on thermally-modified Eucalyptus grandis wood. To this end, boards from five-year-eleven-month-old E. grandis trees, taken from the Duratex-SA company stock, were thermally-modified between 180°C and 220°C in the Laboratory of Wood Drying and Preservation at Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP, Botucatu, Sao Paulo state Brazil. Samplesof each treatment were tested according to the ASTM D-2017 (2008) technical norm. The accelerated decay caused by the brown-rot fungus G. trabeum was compared with the decay caused by the white-rot fungus P. sanguineus, studied by Calonego et al. (2010). The results showed that (1) brown-rot fungus caused greater decay than white-rot fungus; and (2) the increase in temperature from 180 to 220°C caused reductions between 28.2% and 70.0% in the weight loss of E. grandis samples incubated with G. trabeum.