Calibration of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) data of three Eucalyptus species with extractive contents determined by ASE extraction for rapid identification of species and high extractive contents

Abstract

Abstract Plantations of naturally durable timber species could substitute unsustainably harvested wood from tropical forests or wood treated with toxic preservatives. The New Zealand Dryland Forests Initiative (NZDFI) has established a tree-breeding program to develop genetically improved planting stock for durable eucalyptus plantations. In this study the durable heartwood of Eucalyptus bosistoana, Eucalyptus globoidea and Eucalyptus argophloia was characterized by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and NIR data was calibrated with the extractives content (EC), determined by accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) extraction, by means of a partial least squares regression (PLSR) model. It was possible to predict the EC content in the range of 0.34–18.9% with a residual mean square error (RMSE) of 0.9%. Moreover, the three species could also be differentiated by NIR spectroscopy with 100% accuracy, i.e. NIR spectroscopy is able to segregate timbers from mixed species forest plantations.