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The corewood of 25-year-old Hevea brasiliensis from two rubber plantations has high starch content

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Abstract

In Brazil after 25 to 30 years of rubber production, when yield starts to drop, rubber trees are felled and destined for firewood and charcoal, despite the good mechanical properties and workability of the wood, and relatively low production costs. Wood with low starch content could be destined for the production of higher added-value products with potential to spare deforestation of many native forest species, but in rubberwood, starch increases palatability by wood borers and accelerates fungal degradation, thus compromising wood durability and the quality of timber. The aim of this study is to determine whether removal of the outer part of wood or varying the season of logging would result in wood with lower starch content. We measured the content of starch using enzymatic hydrolysis, the radial distribution of starch grains by light microscopy, and the corresponding seasonal variation of starch in 25-year-old felled trees. Rubberwood had large amount of starch in its entire trunk, increasing from the inner to the outer region, before decreasing in the outermost sapwood. Starch content was lower in summer, although higher than in other timber species. After relating the data to a comprehensive bibliographic survey of starch quantification in rubberwood, it was concluded that there are no technological arguments to destine the inner part of rubber tree trunks to the production of higher value products.

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Data availability

The dataset is available upon request.

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We did not develop new code in this study.

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Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to David J Beerling for hosting SGC in his Laboratory in Sheffield and supplying materials / reagents for starch analysis.

Funding

This work was supported by CAPES – Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education within the Ministry of Education of Brazil (Proc. 88881.136044/2017-01), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo - Brasil (FAPESP, Proc. 2015/14954-1) and CNPq Research Productivity Fellowship (Procs. 304715/2018-2 and 303098/2018-0); CB was funded through an ERC advanced grant (CDREG, 322998); through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme MSCA individual fellowship (grant agreement ID No: 702755); and through a Science Foundation Ireland Individual Pathway Fellowship (21/PATH-S/9322).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Botucatu, Sao Paulo State, Brazil

    Sabrina Galetti Cherelli

  2. School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Dublin, Ireland

    Chandra Bellasio

  3. University of the Balearic Islands, 07122, Palma, Illes Balears, Spain

    Chandra Bellasio

  4. Research School of Biology, Australian National University, 2601, Acton, ACT, Australia

    Chandra Bellasio

  5. Department of Forest Science, Soil and Environment, School of Agriculture Science, Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Avenida Universitária, 3780, Botucatu, Brazil

    Carmen Regina Marcati

  6. Center for Tropical Roots and Starches, School of Agriculture Science, Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Avenida Universitária, 3780, Botucatu, Brazil

    Thaís Paes Rodrigues dos Santos & Magali Leonel

  7. Department of Biotechnology and Bioprocess, School of Agriculture Science, Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Avenida Universitária, 3780, Botucatu, Brazil

    Sergio Augusto Rodrigues

  8. Department of Rural Engineering and Socioeconomics, School of Agriculture Science, Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) , Avenida Universitária, 3780, Botucatu, Brazil

    Adriano Wagner Ballarin

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  1. Sabrina Galetti Cherelli
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Contributions

SGC and AWB designed the study; SGC performed the analysis with the contribution of CB, TPRS, SAR, ML, CRM; SGC, CRM, AWB, SAR analysed the data; SGC, AWB, CB, CRM wrote the manuscript; AWB is the corresponding author. All authors have read and agreed to this version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Adriano Wagner Ballarin.

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Cherelli, S.G., Bellasio, C., Marcati, C.R. et al. The corewood of 25-year-old Hevea brasiliensis from two rubber plantations has high starch content. Eur. J. Wood Prod. 81, 847–855 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00107-023-01935-6

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