Application of near Infrared Spectroscopy for Discrimination of Similar Rare Woods in the Chinese Market

Abstract

Red sanders ( Pterocarpus santalinus L.F.) is one of the most precious woods in the Chinese market, and its price rises every year. Some similar rare woods are traded as red sanders to reap high profits. Therefore, a fast and reliable discrimination method to distinguish true red sanders from similar rare woods is needed. To investigate the feasibility of using near infrared spectroscopy for wood discrimination under laboratory and field conditions, samples of red sanders, bois de rose and African padauk from various wood furniture manufacturers were analysed. Three discrimination models, based on soft independent modelling of class analogy (SIMCA), were developed, with two-thirds of the wood samples used as the calibration set and a third of the wood samples used as the validation set. The results show that SIMCA modelling and analysis methods can discriminate between these three similar species of rare woods. Furthermore, three models were able to distinguish between six other species of rare woods: Burma tulipwood ( Dalbergia oliveri Gamble), Neang nuon ( Dalbergia bariensis), Siam rosewood ( Dalbergia cochinchinensis Pierre ex Laness), cocobolo ( Dalbergia retusa Hesml), Ambila ( Pterocarpuserinaceus Poir.) and Burma padauk ( Pterocarpus macarocarpus Kurz).