USDA Forestry Product Lab. in Madison, Wi

[Tom Volk]

Hi Haniduddin Khoja-- 

you wrote:

>Subject: USDA Forestry Product Lab. in Madison, Wi


>I am wondering if this Dept. really exist?
>What do they do?
>Are they on INTERNET?
>----------------------------------------------------------------

Here I am. There are a few of us in mycology groups here on the internet.  
The Forest Service has, for the most part, Data General Machines that do not 
have direct internet access.

There is a variety of work going on here at the Forest Products Lab. Most of 
the research here deal with wood products, preservation, gluing, recycling, 
etc. and a lage number of people work on fungi in biotechnology aspects of 
fungi-- sapstain prevention, biopulping, and bioremediation. 

 Our group, the Center for Forest Mycology Research, is the only fungal 
systematics group here at FPL.  We deal primarily with wood-inhabiting 
fungi, both saprophytes and pathogens.  We have the world's largest (as far 
as we know) collection of wood decay fungi in culture, about 15,000 isolates 
of about 2500 species, from every state in the US and every Canadian 
province except one, as well as representative samples from other countries. 
Most of these fungi are in the Corticiaceae, s.l., Polyporaceae s.l. and 
Agaricales. 

Current research in our group focuses on fungi in the genera Phlebia, 
Phanerochaete, Phellinus, Armillaria, Oxyporus, and Ptychogaster, and we 
also do a good deal of survey and monitoring work involving a wide range of 
other fungi, including fungi of Wisconsin, Alaska, and Venezuela, as well as 
others.

So we do exist! 

Tom Volk   <tjvolk at facstaff.wisc.edu>