A method for estimating the quality of wood chips for use in a pulp and paper production process includes estimating a plurality of wood chip quality-related properties characterizing the wood chips, and associating with these properties a plurality of corresponding wood chip property-related quality indexes. A wood chip quality model combining the wood chip property-related quality indexes is used to generate a resulting chip quality index. The properties may include wood species composition, size distribution, impurities content, moisture content and freshness characterizing the wood chips.