Products + Derivatives

The fragrant resin comprising agar develops in the tree heartwood after wounding followed by pathological and non-pathological mechanisms (Ng et al. 1997) as a defense reaction of the plant, and is deposited around the wounds over the years following the injury. The accumulation of the various volatile compounds eventually forms agarwood (Subasinghe and Hettiarachchi 2013). Owing to the high value of agarwood and declining wild populations, there has been an increase in the cost of the wood over time as well as increasing efforts to produce agarwood from planted Aquilaria trees. In the commercially cultivated trees, the production of resin is induced by physical penetration of the trunk (wounding) and insertion of a microbial fungal. Aquilaria species require up to a decade to reach maturity and most current harvesting techniques, for both wild and cultivated trees, involve destroying the entire tree.