Jose Rodrigues

• PhD, Habilitation
• Researcher at Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa

This study aimed to evaluate the influence in torrefaction of the chemical structure of biomasses from nine poplar commercial SRC clones, evaluated through analytical pyrolysis. The chemical data were integrated into a dataset including LHV gain, representative of torrefaction aptitude and six chemical variables obtained through analytical pyrolysi...

Eucalyptus dunnii is one of the most important Eucalyptus species for short-fiber pulp production in regions where other species of the genus are affected by poor soil and climatic conditions. In this context, E. dunnii holds promise as a resource to address and adapt to the challenges of climate change. Despite its rapid growth and favorable wood...

The residual lignin content of unbleached maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) Kraft pulps was assessed by analytical pyrolysis (Py-lignin) and the results were compared to the Klason lignin content and kappa number. Thirty samples, each from an individual tree, were delignified under identical conditions. The residual lignin content of the pulps v...

Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) is often used to perform high throughput phenotyping on thousands of genotypes using prediction models with high variability. A study was therefore undertaken to analyze the potential of multispecies, multisite and multi-age NIR calibration models of seven chemical properties of eucalyptus wood. The models are based...

Eucalyptus globulus Labill is an important raw material for pulpwood for which low lignin content and high S/G ratios are important parameters. This work shows a highly significant positive and strong correlation between S/G ratio and acid-soluble lignin (ASL) content among E. globulus trees. Although significant, the negative correlation between t...

Analytical pyrolysis can be used to determine the lignin content (Py-lignin) in eucalypt woods with a precision (0.37%) similar to the wet reference methods. Good correlations were found between the Py-lignin results and Klason (94%) and total lignin contents (95%). Besides apparent species-specific deviations, an average difference of 1.3% compare...

The objective of this study was the development of a NIRS (Near InfraRed Spectroscopy) and PLSR (Partial Least Square Regression) model for quantitatively determining extractives, in four clones of the Italian cypress Cupressus sempervirens. Extractives were correlated to the fungal resistance of wood samples evaluated with a non-standard procedure...

Wheat is a dietary staple consumed worldwide strongly responsible for proteins and carbohydrate population intake. However, wheat production and quality will scarcely fulfill forward demands, which are compounded by high-temperature (HT) events as heatwaves, increasingly common in Portugal. Thus, landraces assume crucial importance as potential res...

Key message The wood of Pinus nigra populations planted in Portugal, comparatively to Pinus pinaster , has higher total extractive content, lower Klason lignin and H/G ratio, and similar mechanical properties, presenting advantages for industrial purposes. ContextP. nigra was used in the reforestation of mountainous areas in Portugal, but its wood...

Wood density is one of the most important physical properties of the wood, used in improvement programs for wood quality of major timber species. Traditional core sampling of standing trees has been widely used to assess wood density profiles at high spatial resolution by X-ray microdensitometry methods, but alternative methods to predict wood prop...

Wheat is one of the most important cereals for food and feed, and it is, therefore, necessary to determine the effects of short-term high temperature events (heatwaves) during grain filling. These heatwave events are increasingly common, especially in Portugal. In this work, seven commercial varieties recommended for production in Portugal were sub...

Softwood lignin consists mainly of guaiacyl (G) units and low amounts of hydroxyphenyl (H) units. Even in a small percentage, the ratio of H to G (H/G) and the intraspecific variation are crucial wood lignin properties. Analytical pyrolysis (Py) was already successfully used as a reference method to develop a model based on near-infrared (NIR) spec...

The reduction of resinous species in Portuguese forest areas has caused constraints to wood industry supplies. Portugal represents the extreme southwest of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) natural distribution and large gaps exist in the knowledge of its wood-quality characteristics. Understanding the relationship between these traits is important for...

Although eucalypts are the most planted hardwood trees worldwide, the majority of them are frost sensitive. The recent creation of frost-tolerant hybrids such as Eucalyptus gundal plants (E. gunnii × E. dalrympleana hybrids), now enables the development of industrial plantations in northern countries. Our objective was to evaluate the impact of col...

Background Early branching or syllepsis has been positively correlated with high biomass yields in short-rotation coppice (SRC) poplar plantations, which could represent an important lignocellulosic feedstock for the production of second-generation bioenergy. In prior work, we generated hybrid poplars overexpressing the chestnut gene RELATED TO ABI...

Quantitative determination of cellulose content by means of diglyme [bis(2-methoxyethyl) ether] isolation is useful for rapid screening experiments. However, diglyme isolation from softwoods results in a certain amount of residual lignin in the cellulose. In this paper, the lignin content (L) in diglyme cellulose of three pine species (Pinus halepe...

The architecture, composition, and chemical properties of wood cell walls have a direct influence on the process that occurs prior to fermentation in second-generation biofuel production. The understanding of the construction patterns of cell wall types is the key to the new era of second-generation biofuels. Eucalyptus species are great candidates...

Wood plastic composites (WPCs) are being increasingly used as alternatives to wooden decks. In the present study, it was verified the potential loss of stiffness of WPC deck boards as a result of moisture intake. It was also assessed the importance of moisture intake in the fulfilment of serviceability limit states. For these purposes, three differ...

Four common Portuguese rice varieties—Thaibonnet, Gladio, Albatros, and Eurosis—were tested for their relative susceptibility to Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky, a common pest of stored rice in Portugal and in tropical countries. Physical (moisture content, hardness, length, and width) and chemical (by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform i...

Four common Portuguese rice varieties—Thaibonnet, Gladio, Albatros, and Eurosis—were tested for their relative susceptibility to Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky, a common pest of stored rice in Portugal and in tropical countries. Physical (moisture content, hardness, length, and width) and chemical (by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform i...

Background Nitrogen (N) is a main nutrient required for tree growth and biomass accumulation. In this study, we analyzed the effects of contrasting nitrogen fertilization treatments on the phenotypes of fast growing Eucalyptus hybrids (E. urophylla x E. grandis) with a special focus on xylem secondary cell walls and global gene expression patterns....

A total of 120 Acacia melanoxylon R. Br. (Australian blackwood) stem discs, belonging to 20 trees from four sites in Portugal, were used in this study. The samples were kraft pulped under standard identical conditions targeted to a Kappa number of 15. A Near Infrared (NIR) partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was developed for the Kappa nu...

In this work, we focus on the analysis of data for the ring width of two pine tree species: samples of six maritime pines (Pinus pinaster), grown in the north of Portugal, and one sample of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), grown in the south of Slovakia. A negative impact of solar activity (SA) was observed on the growth of these pine trees with part...

Background Cork oak (Quercus suber) is one of the rare trees with the ability to produce cork, a material widely used to make wine bottle stoppers, flooring and insulation materials, among many other uses. The molecular mechanisms of cork formation are still poorly understood, in great part due to the difficulty in studying a species with a long li...

The variation of wood density and mechanical properties with site, tree and within tree (longitudinal and radial) were studied for blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon R. Br.) grown in four sites in Portugal. Twenty trees were randomly selected (40 cm dbh class, 33–51 years of age), sampled at three stem height levels (5%, 35% and 65% of tree height) and...

Wood is one of our most important natural resources and has been exploited for many hundreds of years as fuel, building material and a source of paper. Its composition is variable among and within species. The ability to monitor the intra-specific variability is a prerequisite to improve wood and end-products properties. This paper describes a stud...

É sabido que as características da madeira produzidas pelas árvores estão sujeitas a um vasto conjunto de factores, como sejam a localização geográfica, condições do solo, do clima, genéticos, etc. Perante o crescente interesse da influência dos factores ambientais sobre o crescimento das árvores, particularmente sob a actual ameaça de ocorrência...

The molar ratios of formaldehyde (F) to urea (U) of three resin formulations in the range from 0.90 to 1.49 have been analyzed by means of Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy and Fourier Transform-Near-Infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy. Application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the spectra (MIR and...

Material and methods A 2-mm thick strip from pith to bark from a 25-year-old Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) wood sample was prepared and dried to an equilibrium moisture content of approximately 12% and stored at 20°C at a relative humidity of 60% prior to analysis. X-ray microdensity was determined using the multi soft X-ray film shooting appara...

The Eucalyptus genus plays an important role in the worldwide forest industry, with highly productive plantations supplying high-quality raw material for pulp and paper, wood, and biomass that would otherwise come from native forests. Lignin and extractives are important components for wood structure and protection but they are disruptive elements...

As an innovation in scientific research and development of a new product and with the objective of adding value to sugarcane bagasse, laboratory panels were made with 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% particles from Saccharum spp bagasse mixed with Eucalyptus grandis fibers, a raw material traditionally used for MDF panels in Brazil. The physical and mech...

The encounter between Portuguese and Japanese cultures, in the 16th century, has promoted the emergence of a new artistic style – the Namban style. A great number of Namban lacquered objects produced for religious, military and civil uses has been preserved in museum and private collections until the present days [1]. These objects are an important...

Wood basic density is one of the most important wood quality properties and one of the simplest to assess but it is too time consuming to be really useful for the screening of populations or for improvement programmes where large numbers of samples need to be assessed. Although the usefulness of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to assess wood prope...

Wood extractives, the non-cell wall components that can be removed by solvents, can play an important role in the protection of the living tree as well as derived wood products. On the other hand they can be detrimental for pulp and paper, paint and varnish films and adhesives. The objective of this work was to develop near infrared-based partial l...

Wood density is defined as the ratio of mass to volume and therefore in principle it should be possible to calculate a unique partial least squares regression (PLS-R) model for several species. PLS-R models for wood density based on X-ray microdensity data were calculated for each species Pinus pinaster and Larix × eurolepis and for both species to...

Near infrared (NIR) spectra of wood and wood products contain information regarding their chemical composition and molecular structure. Both influence physical properties and performance, however, at present, this information is under-utilised in research and industry. Presently NIR spectroscopy is mainly used following the explorative approach, by...

Although it might be thought that the determination of lignin content in wood by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is well known and has been used for several years, model statistics (mainly errors of prediction) found in the literature recommend further study. It is shown that partial least squares regression (PLS-R) models can be improved, namely...

Partial least squares (PLS) regressions were carried out to establish a mathematical correlation between the wet-laboratory reference values and the Fourier transformed near infrared spectra. The wavenumber range resulting from the investigations in Part 1 of this series was examined in detail, evaluating several data pre-processing methods. The da...

High syringly/guaiacyl (S/G) ratios are advantageous for chemical pulp production due to higher delignification rates, higher pulp yields and lower chemical consumption. Near infrared-based partial least-squares regression (PLS-R) models were developed to assess the S/G ratio of Eucalyptus globulus wood using analytical pyrolysis as the reference m...

The family of Fagaceae, comprises about 900 species, among them the best-known group of this family is the oaks, genus Quercus, that are commonly used as timber or for cork production. Cork is produced by Q. suber, an evergreen oak with major economic and environmental importance for Mediterranean region, in particular for Portugal that is the lead...

Background RAIZ is a Portuguese private non-profit research institute owned by the Pulp & Paper Portucel Soporcel Group (http://www.raiz-iifp.pt). RAIZ E. globulus genetic improvement program is managed in order to generate trees with increased economic value, through gains in forest productivity and wood properties. Molecular markers have been use...

Despite the ecological and economic importance of lignin and other wood chemical components, there are few studies of the natural genetic variation that exists within plant species and its adaptive significance. We used models developed from near infra-red spectroscopy to study natural genetic variation in lignin content and monomer composition (sy...

Medium density fiberboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down selected lignin-cellulosic material residuals into fibers, combining it with wax and a resin binder, and then forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure. Because the raw material in the industrial process is ever-changing, the panel industry requires...

• Background Genetic selection for one trait can have an impact on other important traits for final use; thus, it is important to assess the correlation between traits. • Methods Genetic control and relationships among lignin content predicted by near infrared spectroscopy, radial modulus of elasticity (MOERad) and the radial modulus of rupture (MO...

High syringly/guaiacyl (S/G) ratios are advantageous for chemical pulp production due to higher delignification rates, higher pulp yields and lower chemical consumption. Near infrared-based partial least-squares regression (PLS-R) models were developed to assess the S/G ratio of Eucalyptus globulus wood using analytical pyrolysis as the reference m...

In this work we have focused on the analysis of the data on the annual growth of cembra pine (Pinus cembra) grown in the Kôprová dolina Valley in the High Tatra Mountains. The database covers the period of 1406 - 1970, however, the sunspot data (minima and maxima) at the NGDC web site are only available since 1610. Moreover, reliable sunspot data a...

Leptocybe invasa (Fisher & LaSalle) and Ophelimus maskelli (Ashmead) are two new invasive pests, originating from Australia, which are spreading quickly in the Mediterranean countries, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Leptocybe invasa causes typical bump-shaped galls on the leaf midribs, petioles and stems of new growth of several Eucalyptus speci...

The trees of the species Rhus vernicifera, Rhus succedanea and Melanorrhoea usitate grow in various regions of Asia and their sap is used, for thousands of years, as coating materials for the most varied kinds of objects. After drying, the sap of these trees forms a very hard and durable polymer, commonly known as oriental lacquer. The sap consists...

RESUMO: O crescente aumento do consumo de madeira de rápido crescimento, o expressivo crescimento na demanda de painéis de madeira e a necessidade de tecnologias para a utilização de insumos considerados como resíduos constituem desafios no desenvolvimento de novos produtos. Neste estudo, partículas de bagacilho de cana-de-açúcar (Saccharum spp) fo...

This work shows the lignin content determined as well as its quality (H/G ratio) in wood samples of Pinus caribaea var caribaea from three sites at Pinar del Río Province, Cuba. The study was carried out at the Tropical Scientific Investigation Institute, Lisbon, Portugal (Project GEMA). The Analytical pyrolysis was used as analytical method. The r...

Os pólens das árvores urbanas podem participar decisivamente na manifestação de doenças respiratórias alérgicas. Por outro lado, o estado sanitário das árvores e a poluição do ar podem influenciar a quantidade, características e época de produção de pólen. Neste contexto, iniciou-se um projecto de investigação visando: (a) desenvolver o conheciment...

Oriental lacquers have been used as coating materials for thousands of years for wooden, ceramics, leather and metal objects. Lacquers are natural polymers obtained from three species growing in different regions of Asia: Rhus vernicifera (China, Japan and Korea); Rhus succedanea (Vietnam and Taiwan); and Melanorrhoea usitate (Myanmar and Thailand)...

The necessity for inspection and assessment of glued laminated timber structures in service has raised interest in the evaluation of the glue lines. Glue line spectra were analysed and are discussed in detail with respect to spectral contributions from the adhesive, the hardener, the wood lamella below the adhesive, the curing temperature as well a...

The selection criteria for the first generations in the Portuguese Pinus pinaster improvement program have been the growth rate and form traits. In this work we study the consequences of this selection on wood quality traits. This study assesses genetic and phenotypic correlation between growth, wood density components, lignin content and mechanica...

Both the genetics and the environment determine the chemical composition of wood. To assess the chemical composition analytical pyrolysis is being increasingly used. Each single pyrogram is a fingerprint of the chemical composition that should reflect tissue, species, and site related information although hidden in an amount of data. Principal comp...

Oriental lacquer is a material of vegetal origin that is used in the Asian countries as a coating for the most varied kinds of religious and civil use objects. With the Portuguese arrival to the East, the Europeans started to develop a taste for the exotic and exquisite Art of Lacquer. From the 16th century onwards a lacquerware market developed wi...

Summary • The seasonal effect is the most significant external source of variation affecting vascular cambial activity and the development of newly divided cells, and hence wood properties. Here, the effect of edapho-climatic conditions on the phenotypic and molecular plasticity of differentiating secondary xylem during a growing season was investi...

In Part 1, a method for the quantification of the lignin content (Py-lignin) of Maritime pine and spruce wood samples directly from the pyrograms was presented (A. Alves, M. Schwanninger, H. Pereira, J. Rodrigues, J. Anal. Appl. Pyrol. 76 (2006a) 209). The good correlation found between the Py-lignin and Klason lignin content gave a common model to...

Environmental, developmental and genetic factors affect variation in wood properties at the chemical, anatomical and physical levels. Here, the phenotypic variation observed along the tree stem was explored and the hypothesis tested that this variation could be the result of the differential expression of genes/proteins during wood formation. Diffe...

The work concerns the characterisation of waterlogged archaeological wood samples from different excavation sites in Italy by means of infrared spectroscopy. It describes some preliminary evaluations of the analyses carried out, including a quantitative estimation of the holocellulose, one of the structural chemical components constituting the cell...

These proceedings contain 49 papers presented in the following sections: (i) crop wild relative conservation; (ii) establishing inventories and conservation priorities; (iii) threat and conservation assessment; (iv) genetic erosion and genetic pollution; (v) in situ conservation; (vi) ex situ conservation; (vii) information management; (viii) gene...

The first and the second generation of improved maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) have produced gains of up to 30% in stem volume, a reduction of final harvesting age by 10 years and a considerable improvement of stem straightness. The third generation will include wood quality traits for different end-uses, including pulp and fibre properties. To fac...

The aim of this work was to use Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy and partial least squares regression (PLSR) to estimate the oil content of individual Holm oak Quercus sp.) acorn kernels from different trees, sites and years that should be used in the future for molecular marker association studies. Sampling of acorns in two co...

A total of 910 maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) wood discs, belonging to a genetic trial of 80 families with 11–12 trees per family, were used in this study. A near infrared (NIR) partial least squares regression (PLSR) model for the prediction of Kappa number of Pinus pinaster Aiton pulps obtained from samples pulped under identical conditions...

This work shows the lignin content determined as well as its quality (H/G ratio) in wood samples of Pinus caribaea var caribaea from three sites at Pinar del Rio Province, Cuba. The study was carried out at the Tropical Scientific Investigation Institute, Lisbon, Portugal (Project GEMA). The Analytical pyrolysis was used as analytical method. The r...

Cork from Douglas-fir bark (Pseudotsuga menziesii) was separated, extracted and submitted to suberin depolymerization by transesterification with sodium methoxide in methanol. As a result a saponified cork fraction (corksap) with a yield of 19% was obtained. From corksap a milled cork lignin (MCLsap) was isolated using the Björkman procedure with a...

Both spectral noise and reference method noise affect the accuracy and the precision NIR predicted values. The reference noise is often neglected, and the few reports dealing with it only consider random noise artificially added to the original sound reference data. A calibration for lignin content of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) wood meal w...