Preliminary Evaluation of Variations in Anatomical Properties of Melia dubia Cav. Wood

Abstract

The external factors play a key role in bringing about physiological changes in trees there by affecting the cambial activityand ‘Tree to tree’ variation in wood properties within a species and also within the plantation are large and it may be reflected through the variation in anatomical and physical properties.The present study has been designed to assess the tree to tree variation in wood properties of Melia dubia Cav grown under similar conditions but showed morphological variations in terms of growth. They are called as fast grown and slow grown for the purpose of easy understanding. The observations recordedon the anatomical properties like fibre length, fibre diameter, lumen diameter, double wall thickness vessel element length and vessel diameter were analysed and the results are presented in this paper. The fast grown timber showed higher numerical values for anatomical properties viz., fibre length, fibre diameter, fibre lumen diameter, double wall thickness of fibre when compared to slow grown timber. Interestingly the intra tree variation revealed that the outer region of wood in both types of trees had longer and wider vessels. Though variation between trees and among tree is non significant, numerically superior values are recorded in fast grown tree than slow grown tree