The most serious damages caused in the wood industries by decay and sapstain fungi, and the growing international pressures on the use of biocides products with toxic active ingredients harmful to human health and the environment, have made it necessary to search for alternative chemical products to protect the wood, and for the possibility to use micro-organisms as biological controllers. This latter possibility could be considered an interesting change to the traditional wood preservatives because of their economical and ecological advantages. Ophiostoma piliferum (“Cartapip”) and a Spanish albino strain isolated from the Pinus nigra were used in the laboratory tests as biocontrollers. They were tested on the wood decay strains Postia placenta, Coniophora puteana and Gloeophyllum trabeum, and on the blue-stain fungi Pullularia pullulans, Sclerophoma pityophila, and several Spanish isolates. The problem considered, on one part, pretreating wood with biocontrollers and then placing the wood in pure culture of the above mentioned fungi strains. Wood block tests were also performed with the biocontrollers and the damage causing fungi, being inoculated to both sites on the Petri dishes. This was observed to assess the competition between the two strains. The results obtained with the first of the tests have shown a control capacity of the albino strains to compete against the blue stain fungi, and partially resist those of rots. The second test demonstrated an inhibiting capacity in the majority of those. These preliminary results indicate that the use of this kind of fungi could be an alternative to the traditional chemical treatments used to protect wood. The use of bioprotection in agricultural systems has been undergoing evaluation for several years, but there is little information of their use in forestry systems. The objective of this work has been through preliminary studies to assess the effectiveness of these in wood preservation field. For this, a biological fungicide has been used at different concentrations to confront the action of wood decay and sapstain fungi. The obtained results have shown that this type of product could be used, and should be developed as an alternative to ecotoxic products actually in the market.

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