Inferior Wood Dominates Plantation Forest’s Products

A total of 229 forestry researchers who are members of the Indonesian Wood Research Society (MAPEKI) discussing the results of research on the effective processing method of inferior wood at the UGM University Club (UC) building, Wednesday (2/11). Wood researchers from the UGM Faculty of Forestry, Dr. Joko Sulistyo, said the foresters currently face changing quality of forest products from originally high-quality wood into the inferior quality wood that covers nearly 60 percent of Indonesian plantations forest. “We don’t expect these consequences, but we have to accept and deal with them. Society must rely on the inferior wood in the future,” said Joko to the reporters.

According to Joko, use of inferior wood would change the patterns and bring new perspectives in industrial and technological revitalization, especially small and medium industry. Therefore, the dissemination of research results and opportunity for researchers to gain information and knowledge related to the use of inferior wood. “The market has developed and desired timber products that meet the quality criteria and competitive standards in pricing and are environmentally friendly. Surely, this inferior wood utilization will change the patterns and perspectives in technology and industry,” he said.

Sri Rulliaty,  a researcher of Research and Development Center on forestry engineering and forest product processing in Bogor said Indonesia has a fairly rich biodiversity; there are approximately 4000 species of wood throughout the forests of Indonesia. Some of them include the commercial types; the lesser known timber as well as very poorly known wood types. He added, in the utilization, each wood type is often given differences in the characteristic of the wood. More often the type of wood that has the same physical or surface characteristics is mixed with others with the purpose to take greater advantage from people’s ignorance about wood types. “This is certainly initially unidentified, but in later use, there are differences in terms of durability and physical category,” she said.

She said the public can differentiate the types of wood that has strong and durable physical characteristics that is marked with the timber color that is not pale but blackish brown. “Generally, pale-colored wood indicates a young age when harvested,” she said.

Some research results disseminated among other are the utilization of liquid smoke from the coconut shell as preservatives for rubber wood, countermeasures of termite attack towards public’s wood with ammonia fumigation, and the utilization of black leachate as wood preservative of public forests.