Wood decay tests are important for testing different types of wood protection systems. Field tests in Scandinavian climate takes 2-3 years to failure for pine sapwood. Accelerated lab tests have been developed for faster determination of decay resistance. Single strain tests on malt agar or sterile soil is mainly used for basidiomycetes (e.g. EN 113, 1996). However, this type of test does not take the dynamics of the terrestrial microflora into account. Soil beds have been used for decay testing as accelerated field tests. However, the specifications in ENV 807 (2001) favours soft rot over basidiomycetes due to high soil moisture content (MC). Using soils from a field with a known basidiomycete rot type may facilitate an accelerated “field” test against these fungi; however, the exact type of decay activity will be unknown. The aim of this study was to inoculate soils with basidiomycete fungi and evaluate their potential in decay tests. The advantages with inoculated soils over forest soils were hypothesised to be: i) knowledge of presence of fungal species, ii) higher reproducibility due to a more controlled microflora, and iii) overcoming the need for access to forest soil.
Keywords: decay resistance, basidiomycete fungi, wood moisture content
Authors
Rebecka Ringman
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Borås, Sweden
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