Progressive degradation of acetylated wood by the brown rot fungi Coniophora puteana and Rhodonia placenta

This dataset contains measurement data from the following publication: Belt, T.; Awais, M. (2025) Progressive degradation of acetylated wood by the brown rot fungi Coniophora puteana and Rhodonia placenta. Wood Science and Technology 59:13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-024-01620-8. The experimental methods are described in brief below; further details can be found in the publication.

Scots pine sapwood samples were acetylated in neat acetic anhydride to 9% or 18% weight percent gain (WPG) or left untreated to act as reference. The samples were exposed to brown rot decay in a stacked-sample decay test conducted in test tubes. Each replicate tube received 6 reference or acetylated samples stacked on top of each other (sample positions 1-6 from top to bottom) over nutrient agar inoculated with Coniophora puteana (N = 7) or Rhodonia placenta (N = 5). The different wood-fungus combinations were incubated for different durations until the visible fungal mycelium reached the top of the topmost block in one replicate tube. The samples were weighed before modification, after modification, at the end of the decay test, and after the decay test to determine their WPG, moisture content at the end of the decay test, and mass loss due to decay. After decay, 15 samples from every wood-fungus combination were selected for acetyl content measurement and FTIR spectroscopy.

Acetyl contents were measured on powdered samples by saponification followed by HPLC quantification of the liberated acetic acid. FTIR spectra were measured in the 400-4000 cm^-1 spectral range in triplicate on powdered samples using an ATR accessory. For further analysis, the spectra were cut to 800-1800 cm^-1 range, baseline corrected (third degree polynomial subtraction), smoothed (Savitzky-Golay procedure with a second-order polynomial and a 15-point window), and normalised (unit vector normalisation).

The "Mass data and acetyl content.csv" -file gives the sample identifiers (ID, sample type, test fungus, tube number, sample position) and measured mass data of all samples, and the acetyl contents of the selected samples. Masses m_init, m_mod, m_wet, and m_dec are the initial unmodified dry mass, the modified dry mass, the decaying wet mass, and the decayed dry mass, respectively. Acetyl contents (%) are given on a decayed wood basis.

The “Unprocessed FTIR spectra_reference”, “Unprocessed FTIR spectra_9%”, and “Unprocessed FTIR spectra_18%” -files contain the unprocessed FTIR spectra of the reference, 9% WPG and 18% WPG samples (see the "Mass data and acetyl content.csv" -file for sample identifiers). The “Preprocessed FTIR spectra_reference”, “Preprocessed FTIR spectra_9%”, and “Preprocessed FTIR spectra_18%” -files in turn contain the preprocessed FTIR spectra of reference, 9% WPG and 18% WPG samples.