Effects of the lateral growth rate on wood quality of Gmelina arborea from 3.5-, 7- and 12-year-old plantations

? Awareness of the shortage of fossil resources leads to an increasing demand for woody biomass. We investigated the feasibility of using fast-growing Gmelina arborea wood for material production. Gmelina arborea wood samples were collected from trees of varying cambium ages in Indonesia, from 3.5-, 7- and 12-year-old plantations.

? The lateral growth rate and the cambium age did not significantly affect the longitudinal released strain of the growth stress, xylem density, or microfibril angle at the outermost surface of the secondary xylem at any sampling site. However, fiber length in the 3.5-year-old plantation tended to be shorter in smaller diameter trees, whereas in larger diameter trees it was almost the same as that in trees from the 7- and 12-year-old plantations. This suggests that smaller diameter trees in the 3.5-year-old plantation had not yet produced mature wood.

? Xylem qualities had already reached values appropriate for harvesting, except in the smaller diameter trees from the 3.5-year-old plantation. This indicates that the larger diameter trees had already matured, regardless of their cambium age. These results suggest that the next step is to develop silvicultural treatments to increase the lateral growth rate during the early growing stage, in order to produce as much mature wood as possible, as quickly as possible.