ORIGINAL ARTICLE The properties of red meranti wood (Shorea leprosula Miq) from stand with thinning and shade free gap treatments Nyoman J. Wistara 1 • Munawar Sukowati 1 • Prijanto Pamoengkas 2 Received: 3 June 2015 / Accepted: 5 March 2016 Ó Indian Academy of Wood Science 2016 Abstract Selective cutting and line planting silvicultural system has been carried out in natural forest to increase the growth rate of red meranti (Shorea leprosula Miq.). Even though high growth rate has been understood tend to decrease certain basic properties of wood; however mea- surement of the basic properties specifically done on the red meranti resulted from thinning and shade free gap treatment has been lacking. In the present research, mea- surement of the basic properties of red meranti resulted from thinning and shade free gap treatment was done. It was found that thinning and increasing shade free gap increased the diameter of tree, longitudinal shrinkage, fiber diameter, lumen diameter, sapwood extractives, and ash content. On the other hand, these treatment decreased heartwood proportion, crown coverage, specific gravity, wood density, mechanical properties, radial and tangential shrinkage, fiber length, cell wall thickness and heartwood extractives. Lignin, holocellulose, a-cellulose and hemi- celluloses were not significantly influenced by the treat- ments. Overall, thinning and increasing shade free gap tended to reduce the quality of wood. Keywords Red meranti Á Silviculture treatment Á Thinning Á Shade free gap Á Basic properties Introduction Red meranti (Shorea leprosula Miq.) is a relatively fast growing species (Mawazin and Suhaendi 2011) and natu- rally retains a straight and cylindrical stem structure. It is a versatile wood that is commonly utilized for plywood, furniture, structural wood, and musical instrument prod- ucts. Even though at the present the wood is mainly extracted from natural forests, endeavors have been done to produce the wood from sustainably managed plantation forests. In Indonesia, the growth rate improvement of red mer- anti has been intensively carried out through the Selective Cutting and Line Planting (SCLP) silviculture system. In this system, maximum growth rate was achieved with planting line width of 4–10 m (Pamoengkas 2006). SCLP system has succeeded to result in a diameter mean annual increment (MAI) of 2.31 cm/yr. (Pamoengkas and Prayogi 2011) and this increment rate was considered as a very high rate of growing (Mindawati and Tiryana 2002). Stand thinning significantly improved the diameter growth (Kammesheidt et al. 2003), increased leave biomass and crown area (Abohassan et al. 2010) and due to that the growth of wood is very much influenced by light intensity (Sukendro and Sugiarto 2012). The properties of wood resulted from SCLP treatments remains unknown. There- fore, evaluation of the basic wood properties needs to be carried out in order to appropriately allocate its application. Stand thinning and shading control of forest stand has been reported to change the quality of wood (Uner et al. 2009). Wood density, fiber length, and latewood proportion decrease with increasing thinning intensity of forest stand (Cao et al. 2008). The decrease of wood density is indicative for the decrease of wood substances in the cell wall relative to the ratio of cell wall thickness to cell & Nyoman J. Wistara nyomanwis@gmail.com 1 Department of Forest Products, Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Kampus IPB Darmaga, Dramaga, Bogor 16680, Indonesia 2 Department of Silviculture, Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Kampus IPB Darmaga, Dramaga, Bogor 16680, Indonesia 123 J Indian Acad Wood Sci DOI 10.1007/s13196-016-0161-y