India constitutes 2% of the world’s forest area but it has to support over 15% of the human and nearly 14% of the cattle population and therefore forests in India are under immense biotic pressure. The main concern today is the rate at which avoidable factors or man made threats accelerate the process of forest degradation and to evolve measures to check the same. Man made threats include exploitation and use of forests for commercial purposes in a non-scientific way. The need of the hour is to preserve our natural forests which can be done by utilization of man made forests scientifically. Wood continues to be an extensively used raw material for diverse, domestic, individual and structural applications such as housing, bullock carts, boats, toys, handicrafts, agricultural implements, furniture, fishing craft etc. Growing demands, diminishing supplies and the intensity of resource has led to acute shortage and phenomenal hikes in prices of conventionally preferred species and therefore, attention is now diverted towards fast growing plantation species to augment wood supply. However, most of these timber species are naturally non-durable or moderately durable and need protection from biological aspects like fungi, bacteria, termites, borers etc. Technologies such as preservative treatments can enhance the service life of timber several times and can save millions of well grown trees. However, the quantity of timber being treated in India is negligible as a favorable operation regime for scientific processing especially wood treatment does not exist. Compounding the problem is extremely weak, user group-researcher linkages, low level of technology development, technology absorption, extension efforts and non existence of R & D industry-researcher- end user association. These issues are discussed in detail in this paper.

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