CORVALLIS -- Timber researchers hope to create wood sniffers that could track lumber from forest to front-room furniture the way bloodhounds track criminals: by their scent.

The devices still are in the imagination of their developers. They could allow the timber industry to certify that products come from wood managed in an environmentally sound way. They could make it harder to move pirated logs, reducing theft and illegal logging. Or they could help the industry be better at marketing and management.

Glen Murphy, a forest-engineering professor at Oregon State University, said he envisions an electronic "wood hound." Lumber would be tagged with scents such as the three perfumery chemicals he has been using on wood samples from cedar, ponderosa pine and hemlock trees.

So far, the $8,000 device he is using can track one distinct scent, but it can't deal with combinations.

Five years from now, Murphy hopes to be able to track 25 aromas in various combinations. That would allow timber trackers to tag more than 33 million logs with a unique scent for each, he said.

"Ideally, we want to track from standing tree to piece of wood on a desk," he said. "That's where we want to go. A smell is like a fingerprint."

The industry now uses metal staples or plastic tags that interfere with pulp-mill and sawmill machinery. The alternative is radio-frequency tags, which are expensive.

"One of the challenges the forestry industry faces is being able to track products through the supply chain," Murphy said.

Murphy has been exploring the possibility since 2000. Along with Robert Franich from the New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Murphy published a study in the February 2004 issue of Forest Products Journal exploring the idea.

Each year, 1.5 billion cubic meters of timber, or 5 billion to 15 billion logs, are harvested worldwide, Murphy said.

A truckload of about 50 logs can cost upward of $2,000, so timber manufacturers want to keep close tabs on their merchandise.

Murphy said that a wood-sniffer system would have to be inexpensive and able to withstand harsh climates, difficult transportation conditions and treatments such as sawing, varnishing and staining.

Murphy is looking for grant money from the federal government, the state and private timber companies.