Effect of growth on wood traits in seed-raised plantations of Dalbergia sissoo Roxb.

Pramod Pande?Laxmi Rawat

Effect of growth on wood traits in seed-raised plantations of Dalbergia sissoo Roxb.

Pramod Pande?Laxmi Rawat

We studied the effect of growth on wood anatomical dimensions and specific gravity of seed-raised plantation wood of Dalbergia sissoo with twelve treesofdifferent diameters and similar ages.Fiber length ranged from 925 to 1,287 l m,fiber-diameter was 19–23 l m,wallthickness was 4.2–5.4 l m,vessel-element-length was 152–188 l m,vesselelement-diameterwas 152–200 l m,and specific gravity was 0.59–0.72.Growth parameters including tree height,diameter at breast height,net primary productivity and net ecosystem productivity were significantly and positively correlated. Growth parameters showed non-significant positive relationships with fiber-length,fiber diameter,wallthickness,vessel element length,and vessel element diameter.The trend of wood traits increased with growth.Specific gravity showed non-significant negative relationships with growth parameters.Although the growth rate had varied relationships with wood properties,as reported by various workers,the wood element dimensions showed no significant relationship with growth parameters and there was little effect of growth rate on wood traits in seed-raised plantation of D.sissoo.

Fiber dimensionsVessel-element dimensionsSpecific gravityGrowth parameters

Introduction

Dalbergia sissoo is an important timber species of North India.Sapwood is prone to decay.The heartwood is used in doors,furniture,construction and cabinets.Tension-wood creates various defects in the timber which reduces its utility.Studies have been made of a number of hardwood species.Wood density of Terminalia paniculata and Terminalia tomentosa varied by locality(Karnik et al.1970). Eucalypts have,however,been reported to show minor variations in wood properties due to latitude and elevation, and compared to the conifers and other tropicalhardwoods (Zobel and Van Buijtenen 1989).

Wood is a highly variable material.In order to produce and use wood efficiently,the variation patterns within trees,among trees within species,among provenances within species and among species must be understood.The variability in anatomical characteristics profoundly influences the properties of wood(Dadswell 1957;Burley and Palmer 1979).Features of interest in this connection include cell size,proportion and arrangement of different elements,and specific gravity. The general pattern of variation in wood element dimensions is not only within a species but also within a tree(Dinwoodie 1961;Zobel 1965;Rao and Rao 1978; Pande et al.1995).The variation of elements within a species is affected by climate,and the system under they are grown which in turn affects the growth and the wood properties.

Though studies have been made on the variation of wood elementdimensions,little attention is given on wood quality parameters vis-a`-vis growth characteristics in hardwood tree species.In this paper we attemptto analyse the effects of growth parameters on wood traits in seedraised plantation of D.sissoo.

Materials and methods

Experimental sites

We studied seed-raised plantations of D.sissoo atfoursites located in three forestdivisions of Punjab namely Amritsar, Hoshiarpur and Ferozepur,representing three agro-climatic zones ofthe State(Sehgaletal.1990).Mean annualrainfall and mean annual temperatures at Hoshiarpur(30550N, 74400E,at 260 m asl.)were 890.50 mm and 23.71C,in Amritsar(31370N,74550E,at 234 m asl.)563.10 mm and 23.18C and in Ferozpur(305504200N,75180E,at 198 m asl.)426.70 mm 24.38C.The study sites in three agroclimatic zones Punjab are depicted in the Table 1.

Sampling

We collected field data by using the stratified tree technique method(Art and Marks 1971)for harvesting the sample trees for biomass,net primary productivity(NPP) and net ecosystem productivity(NEP)estimation.We recorded the diameter at breast height(DBH)and tree heightof12 representative sample trees covering the entire diameter range.Data were collected from three replicate trees of D.sissoo each from four plantation sites of similar age and managed by the State Forest Department,Punjab. The four sites were located at Kharkan and Dhirowal (Hoshiarpur District),Kamalpur(Amritsar District)and Dharmkot(Ferozpur District)(Table 2).Five transverse discs of10 cm thickness were cutfrom the trunk ofeach of 12 trees at heights of 2,4,6,8 and 10 m to sample the verticalvariations.These discs were referred to as DI,DII, DIII,DIVand DVfrom the base ofthe trunk.Each disc was divided into three directions of the periphery of the tree (North,South-East and South-West).Each direction was further divided into five radial parts from pith to periphery to cover radial variations.

Laboratory methods

The disc samples were macerated with 50%HNO3and a pinch of KClO3.The macerated wood elements werethoroughly mixed and spread on a glass slide,and observations were taken under compound microscope(Purkayastha etal.1980).Twenty five measurementsforfiber-length,fiberdiameter,wall-thickness,vessel-element-length and vesselelement-diameter were taken from unbroken cells of the macerated wood(IAWA Committee 1979).Basic density of core sampleswasdetermined by the ratio ofoven dry weight to green volume.The green volume wasdetermined by water displacement.Specific-gravity was the ratio ofthe density of the sample to the density of water.The data obtained from systemic sampling for wood anatomicalparameters and specific-gravity was calculated forwhole tree mean and standard deviation.Data were analyzed using SPSS 10 for Analysis of variance and Pearson correlation analysis for relationships between growth and wood parameters.

Table 1 Selected sites and respective agro-climatic zones of Punjab

Results and discussion

Mean whole tree wood elementdimensions and specific-gravities for all12 trees are listed in Table 3.The range for fiberlength for12 trees was 925.50–1,287.00 l m,forfiber-diameter is 18.93–22.70 l m,for wall thickness is 4.20–5.40 l m,for vessel-element-length is 152.25–188.40 l m,for vessel-element-diameterwas 152.25–200.40 l m and forspecific gravity is 0.591–0.724.

Growth parameters including tree height,DBH,NPP and NEP were significantly and positively correlated with each other.The relationships between different growth parameters of DBH,height,volume,biomass,NPP,NEP, and wood elements dimensions including fiber length,fiber diameter,wall thickness,vessel-element-length,vesselelementdiameterand specific-gravity are listed in Table 4.

Growth parameters generally showed non-significant positive relationships with fiber-length,fiber-diameter, wall-thickness,vessel-element-length,and vessel-element diameter.Though,the relationship is poor in most of the cases,the trend increased with growth.Specific-gravity shows non-significant negative relationship with growth parameters.The dimensions of wood anatomical parameters shows lowervaluesuntilDBH exceeded 25.9 cm when the characters stabilized.Kauba et al.(1998)found little effectofclone on fiber-length and attributed itto the nature of juvenile wood studied as fiber-length was controlled mainly by a combination of physiological and environmental factors.Richardson(1964)reported that tracheidlength of mature trees is correlated with tree growth butthe relationship was complex and sometimes did not hold. Dense(1971)showed thatthe correlation of shootlength to tracheid length was strong enough to use in planning for large scale planting.Some faster growing trees had shorter fiber(Hildebrandt 1960)but this is not a general rule. Echols(1958)observed longertracheids with fastergrowthin Scots pine.Growth positively affected fiber-length in hardwood species,including Juglans(Mell 1910),Eucalyptus tereticornis(Pande 2006)Populus(Kennedy and Smith 1959;Yanchul et al.1984),and D.sissoo clonal plantation(Pande 2006).We found increasingly strong correlations with increasing growth,which supports these studies.Some authors reported thatgrowth rate differences did notaffecttracheid length in conifers(Thor1964;Petrik

1968;Dorn 1969)or fiber length in hardwoods(Scaramuzzi 1958;Aytug 1962;Webb 1964;McElwee and Faircloth 1966;Oteng-Amoako et al.1983).Some reports showed negative impacts of growth on fiber-length of Eucalyptus(Amos et al.1950;Wikes and Abbott 1983), Salix,Celtis,and Carya(Tayler and Wooten 1973).

Table 2 Tree growth parameters

Table 3 Mean±SD of the dimensions of different wood element in all trees

Table 4 Pearson correlation among growth and wood traits

In D.sissoo clonal(Pande and Singh 2005)and seedraised plantations,growth rate positively affected fiberlength as reported by many workers mentioned above. However,a complex picture emerged with respect to the effects of growth rate on tracheid/fiber-length both in conifers and hardwoods.

The relationship between growth parameters and specific gravity was non-significant in our study and was negative. Panshin et al.(1964)and Kazumi(1983)reported little relationship between specific gravity and ring width in diffuse-porous hardwoods,similar to our results.Similarly, there is no definite relationship between growth rate and specific-gravity in diffuse-porous hardwoods(Johnson 1942; Brown et al.1949;Wangaard 1950).Hillis and Brown (1978)stated that the mean wood density for a tree is not influenced by,or is insignificantly correlated with growth rate in eucalypts.Hans and Burley(1972)reported that in diffuse-porous hardwoods,growth rate usually had little effect on specific-gravity.For example,studies on Liriodendron,Liquidambar,Platanus,and Populus reported little orno effectofgrowth rate on specific gravity(Kennedy and Smith 1959;van Eck and Woessner 1964;Webb 1964; Taylor 1965).Lamb(1968)reported that growth rate of Gmelina did not affect density and thatrapid growth of this species was desired.There are few exceptions to this general trend,such as black wattle(Acacia mearnsii),where Schonau(1982)reported that fast growth increased specific gravity as it did in Swietenia(Briscoe et al.1963)and Populus(Kennedy and Smith 1959).For Tectona and Gmelina,Keiding et al.(1984)showed a strong effect of diameter size on wood density.A negative relationship between growth rate and density was reported for Triplochiton by Oteng-Amoako et al.(1983).Such results were also reported for Populusdeltoides by Farmer and Wilox (1966),in Eucalyptus spp.by Wikes and Abbott(1983),and in Populus tremuloides by Jeffersen and Yanchuk(1985).

Although growth rate had varying relationships with wood properties as reported by various workers,wood element dimensions showed non-significant relationships with growth rate in seed-raised D.sissoo.

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16 January 2013/Accepted:23 January 2013/Published online:8 January 2015

The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com

Corresponding editor:Yu Lei

Forest Research Institute,Dehradun 248006,India

e-mail:pandep123@rediffmail.com