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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2004

Abstract

Wood modification based on furfuryl alcohol improves several important wood properties, such as the resistance to fungal decay and insect attack, hardness, dimensional stability, bending strength and stiffness. The improvements of wood properties depend on the weight percent gain (WPG) due to furfurylation.Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy was used to calibrate PLS-regression models for prediction of WPG due to furfurylation in birch wood. Spectra were obtained in cross-sections of solid wood. A PLS-regression model based on wood samples with WPG ranging from 16.7 to 35.1%, performed well when validated on a separate test set.The coefficient of determination between laboratory measured WPG and predicted WPG was high (R2 = 0.87). The prediction error given by the root mean square error of prediction was low (RMSEP = 1.23). The results showed that the technique should be considered a prospective tool for quality assessment of furfurylated wood.

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to distinguish priming effects from the effects of phytoremediation of a creosote-polluted soil. The concentration of 13 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and their combined soil toxicity (using four bioassays), was determined on recently excavated, homogenized soil and on such soil subjected to a time-course phytoremediation experiment with lucerne.The results showed a high priming effect, with minor positive and synergistic effects of planting and fertilization on PAH degradation rates. At the end of the experiment, PAH degradation reached 86% of the initial 519 mg PAHs kg-1. Two of the four toxicity tests (bioluminescence inhibition and ostracod growth inhibition) corroborated the chemical data for residual PAHs, and indicated a significant reduction in soil toxicity.We conclude that priming effects can easily surpass treatment effects, and that an unintentional pre-incubation that ignores these effects can jeopardize the full quantitative assessment of in situ bioremediation of contaminated soil.

Abstract

The quantitative expression and the regulation of chitinase-encoding genes ech30, ech42 and nag1 in Trichoderma atroviride P1 under varying growth conditions were investigated using real-time RTPCR, principle component and multivariate analyses. Twelve media combinations including 0.1% and 3% glucose as carbon source and no (0 mmol/L), low (10 mmol/L) and high (100 mmol/L)ammonium acetate as nitrogen source combined with or without colloidal chitin at 3 time intervals and 2 replications were applied to current study. The real-time RT-PCR analysis showed that the expression of ech30, ech42 and nag1 was regulated by the interaction of nitrogen, glucose and chitin under different growth conditions. The highest and earliest expressions of ech30 were induced by glucose and nitrogen starvation i.e. 0.1% glucose and 10 mmol/L ammonium acetate in the growth media. This was also the case for ech42 and nag1 but at a relatively low level. In contrast, high (3 %) glucose and high (100 mmol/L) ammonium acetate concentrations repressed the expression of all the genes studied. These results were confirmed by principle component and multivariate analyses.The effect of chitin on ech30, ech42 and nag1 expression varied depending on the concentrations of glucose and ammonium acetate.