Teakwood is well known for its excellent natural durability, mostly due to its high proportion of extracts. Amongst these extracts, quinones, and more precisely some naphtoquinones (such as lapachol) and anthraquinones (such as tectoquinone) appear to play a crucial role in the resistance to wood decay organisms. At a laboratory scale, sawdust from malaysian teak heartwood has been extracted under different temperatures. These extracts, as well as solutions of commercialised lapachol and tectoquinone were used to treat pine sapwood mini blocks. Such treated and leached samples were used for accelerated fungal tests using basidiomycetes. The results have shown that protection against fungi was achieved through these treatments. Nevertheless, laboratory extracts from teakwood and commercial quinones performed differently, arousing then questions on this way of preserving non durable wood species.

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