Hemicelluloses, among the wood constituents degrade first on in creas ing the temperature .This is clear from the endothermic peak at 158◦C in the DSC analysis and also a shift in the peak position of the NIR absorption band at 1711nm (corresponds to furanose and pyranose ring) towards the higher wavelength region on increasing the temperature.
The results obtained by the CIELAB color parameters and the DSC thermogram are correlated with the diffuse reflectance near infrared spectra of the wood sample. It is evident from the results that modification of the chemical and the physical properties of wood take place upon thermal treatment. NIR spectroscopy showed the potential to be used for the assessment of thermally treated wood. The present work may be useful for developing a non-destructive and an accurate test method to understand the degradation mechanism of wood and for monitoring the quality of wood.