ABSTRACT
Soft rot is a form of microbiological wood degradation caused by fungi. The term ‘soft rot’ was originally proposed by Savory (1954) to be used for ‘decay caused by cellulose-destroying microfungi to distinguish it from the brown and white rots caused by wood-destroying basidiomycetes’. The term was based on the observation that wood surfaces become very soft when attacked by microfungi. Findlay and Savory (1954) and Savory (1954) described the typical cavity chains within wood cell walls associated with this form of decay but did not however report any observations of erosion of cell walls. Such attack was later described by Courtois (1963a,b) and Corbett (1965) for a number of microfungi that also formed typical cavities. Corbett observed that one species, Camarosporium ambiens, exclusively eroded the cell walls in birch. Nilsson (1973) found during an extensive study on wood degradation by microfungi that most cavity-forming species also eroded the cell walls in birch wood and that several species exclusively caused an erosion form of attack.
