Hevea brasiliensis - technologic study of its sawn wood and products from plantation at São Paulo State - Brazil

• Grant number: 09/08666-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: October 01, 2009
• End date: September 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Civil Engineering - Structural Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Adriano Wagner Ballarin
• Grantee: Adriano Wagner Ballarin
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Agronômicas (FCA). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Rubber tree is a very important culture to Brazil, considering the utilization of its rubber in the fabrication of different products of current usage by modern society and, more recently, considering the technological potential - already explored by several countries - of its wood, obtained from its plantation, after concluded the rubber productive cicle. According to several researches, the rubber tree plantation area in Brazil, around 130,000 ha, can produce annually 650 m3 of wood, sufficient to partially decrease the total deficit of wood obtained from plantation in our country. In this way and as a consequence of the future increase of plantation areas of this culture in Brazil, there will be an expressive offer of this wood in the end of its main rotation period, that goes for around 30 years. In the last years there were detected new pathogens in the panel of rubber tree, e.g. fungi Fusarium solani and F. moniliforme, causing a pathologic disease with hard damage to rubber production. This fact has preoccupied farmers because, until now, the unique observed disease in the panel was the physiologic brown bast. This problem is increasing, with severe reduction of trees in production and at last, in the total production of rubber. In this it will be studied two major importance clones of rubber trees in Brazil (RRIM 600 and GT 1), considering three distinct sanity condition of the plantation: healthy plantation, plantation with pathologic disease and plantation of physiologic disease (brown bast). In the first part of it, related to healthy plantation, it will be carried out a technologic study of its sawn wood and of plywood produced from this wood. In the second part, dedicated to plantation with diseases, it will be developed an epidemiologic and pathologic study of the general disease in the panel and a technology study of the effects of the diseases in wood quality. Conducted by an interdisciplinary team, the study aims to present significant contribution to the definition of rubber trees potential as a source of wood for multiple purposes. (AU)