The effect of site and cambial age on selected anatomical properties of

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this project was to determine the site effect- especially water availability -and the effect of cambial age on selected anatomical properties of Pinus radiata, inorder to be able to predict possible changes in wood quality due to an expectedchange in climate. A second objective was to correlate ring and fibre properties, inorder to determine, if ring properties could be used as a proxy to describe woodquality. The samples consisted of 12 trees, sampled at an age of 1 to 16 from sixselected sites in the Western Cape, which ranged from water stressed to moist.Apart from the water availability all other external factors, such as elevation etc. werekept as equal as possible.Anatomical wood properties such as fibre length and fibre diameter, lumen diameter,cell wall thickness, ring width and earlywood/latewood ratio were determined andtheir change with cambial age and water availability was evaluated. Fibre length,fibre diameter and cell wall thickness increased with increasing cambial age, andring width and earlywood/latewood ratio decreased with increasing cambial age. Nosignificant correlations were found between any of the ring or fibre properties andwater availability. Most of the fibre properties were significantly correlated with ringwidth and earlywood/latewood ratio when age was not considered as covariate, butshowed no correlation when the age effect was excluded.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University