Résumé
Confronted with growing competition, wood industry manufacturers are increasingly looking to optimize their processing processes and to control the quality of their finished products. Similarly, research and development teams in genetics and forest genetic improvement need new powerful tools enabling the evaluation of a large number of samples at a low cost and quickly. In this context, the development of non-destructive tools for measuring wood material performances (in all its forms: massive, de structured or reconstructed) is essential. Since the early 1990s, numerous research studies have explored the usefulness of using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to estimate the properties of wood material.This chapter, divided into two parts, aims to present a state of the art on the use of NIRS methodology in the wood domain. The first part describes technology and principles of its operation as well as its various fields of application for macromolecules, some physical and mechanical properties. The second part takes stock of the latest knowledge gained to date on the use of NIRS in the cooperage sector and takes example of an original industrial process for measuring the quality of oak wood directly on the production line.