Dr. N. Munal Meitei
DFO/Chandel, email-nmunall@yahoo.in
The charismatic Agar oil which sometimes is called “Wood of the Gods” was discovered long back and used to be an exalted passion for the Sultans and erstwhile Sheikhs. Since those days, agarwood oil is widely acclaimed and treated as a precious medicinal and cosmetic product. It is even valued more than red rubies and other rarely found germs. It is because of its fantabulous fragrance that can captivate anyone’s heart, mind and soul, unlike other perfumes, it is cent per cent natural.
Agarwood or Agar is dark resinous heartwood found from the Aquilaria tree which is native to the South East Asia from the foothills of the Himalayas to the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Whole of the geographical area in Manipur is suitable for Agar plantation. Aquilaria tree is a large evergreen and fast-growing with medium sized broad leaf species of family Thymelaeceae. The genus Aquilaria consist of 31 accepted species and 19 of them are confirmed to produce agarwood.
In the wild, they can grow from 15 – 30 meters tall and 60 cm in diameter. The tree grows in natural forests at an altitude of a few meters above sea level to about 1000 meters, and it grows best around 500 meters. It’s suited on a wide range of soils, including poor sandy soil. Seedlings need a lot of shade and water. Trees grow very fast, and start producing flowers and seeds as early as four years old.
In South Asia Aquilaria agallocha is found, particularly in India, Aquilaria malaccensis which is the primary producer is mostly found in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Aquilaria crassna principally grows in Indochina. A number of other species are known such as Aquilaria grandfolia, Aquilaria chinesis etc. are also producers. All these species are suited and native to our state Manipur also. Agar is also produced in a closely related genus called Gyrinops tree.
The fragrance of the agarwood is complex and pleasing, with few or no similar analogues. As a result, agarwood and its essential oil gained great cultural and religious significance in the ancient civilizations all over the world. In the Xuanzang’s travelogues and Harsha Charita, written by Bana Bhatt in 652 AD mentioned about the use of volumes of fine writing in leaves made from agarwood bark and black agarwood oil occupied a very prominent place. The tradition of making writing-materials from agarwood bark still exists in Assam. Once Sri Sankardeva said, Agra and Chandana are the two divine trees capable of fulfilling human desires.
Formation of Agarwood
Formation of Agarwood occurs in the truck and roots of the tree that have been infected by a parasitic ascomycetous mold known as Phaeoacremonium parasitica, a dematiaceous dark walled fungus. Prior to infection, the heartwood is relatively light and pale in colour. As a response to defend the fungal attack, the tree produces a resin which is highly volatile organic compounds called sesquiterpenes and chromones.
By the process of tylosis, this resin aids in suppressing or retarding the fungal growth. While the unaffected wood of the tree which is relatively light in colour, the resin dramatically increases the mass and density of the affected wood, changing its colour from pale beige to dark brown or black. In natural forests, only 7% of the trees are affected by the fungus.
In India, as per the report from the Rain Forest Research Institute, Jorhat, the Agarwood gains the commercial value after it is affected by a fungus, on the tunnel bored by the larvae of the Zeuzera conferta Walker, a stem borer. The name of the fungus is yet to be disclosed due to want of patent allotment. The stem borer larvae make vertical tunnels which are the initial sites for the infection. From these, the infection gradually spreads up and oleoresins are accumulated in the infected areas.
The infection process takes time and the highest concentration of agar upto 2.5 kg to 5.0 kg is usually found in the trees around 50 years of age. According to Rajib Kumar Borah of RFRI, Jorhat, Professor Robart Blanchett of the University of Minnesota in US had got a patent for the fungus, but when it was brought by the Assam Company Ltd in Dibrugarh and tried there by inoculating into the trees, it did not produce the desired results. The fungus found indigenously in Assam is different from the imported one and is more effective.
Demand for Agarwood
Agarwood though it is native to the South East Asia, its demand spreads all over the world. Prices range from a few thousand rupees per kilo for the lowest quality to over millions of rupees for top quality oil and resinous wood. The products have the biggest demand in the oil rich Middle East. One liter of agar oil fetches as much as Rs 10,00,000 to Rs 15,00,000 in the International Market.
Application for Agarwood
The perfume oil obtained by carbon dioxide extraction from agar-wood retains the incense of the true agarwood. High quality resin of agarwood comes from a tree’s natural immune response to the fungal attack. Such agar wood oil is commonly called as first class agarwood.
An inferior resin is created using a forced methods where aquilaria trees are deliberately wounded, leaving them more susceptible to a fungal attack. This is commonly called second class agarwood. Pure agar oil freezes at 22°C and it becomes oil at 40°C. The oil is best for medicinal and cosmetics. In the Middle East countries, the oil is mostly used as perfumes.
Agar wood oil nature is hot, so also use in increasing the sexual power. The agarwood oil is also useful in rheumatoid arthritis, cough, asthma, bronchitis, skin diseases and foul ulcers. It is very good for skin. The external application of agar oil is very useful in vomiting in children, pectoralgia due to pneumonia and cepalagia. Agarwood was also used by the ancient Egyptians for embalming the dead bodies.
The Challenges to Agar Tree
Overharvesting and habitat loss threatened the survival of agarwood species. One of the reasons for the relative rarity and high cost of agarwood and agarwood extracts is the depletion of the number of plants in the wild resources. It is very difficult to understand which tree has the oil and which has not, and therefore the trees are being indiscriminately cut to find the oil and thus only a sparse growth are left in the wild.
Destructive and unsustainable harvesting has led to endangering the Aquilaria species throughout its natural ranges, resulting in calls for strict trade controls and outright bans. Therefore, concern over the impact of the global demand for agarwood has thus led to the inclusion of the main taxa on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITIES lists in Appendix II, which requires that international trade in agarwood is subject to control designed to ensure that harvest and export are to the detriment of the survival of the species in the wild. Under the IUCN red list, agarwood is also a threatened species.
How to Uplift the Rural Economy
An endangered species may be preserved by cultivation under plantations, innovative marketing and industrialization. The main objective is to establish economic and environmentally sustainable Agar wood production, to prevent extinction in forests and to support socio-economic development by improving rural people’s income; to build a socio-economic and agro-forestry development model that can be applied worldwide. Nature conservation can only be truly successful when the local inhabitant is closely involved in the planning and implementation. This can alone be done when conservation efforts are combined with socio-economic development.
Most of the species of Agarwood are native to South East Asia and they are suited for the entire North Eastern States including Manipur. In Assam, the trade in agarwood oil is said to be the largest un-organised industrial sector. Almost every household in rural Upper Assam is engaged in extraction of the agar oil which is then sold to middlemen @ Rs 50,000 to Rs 70,000 per kg before taking to Mumbai for onwards transportation to the Gulf countries.
The oil extracted from the agar trees in Assam is especially in great demand in the West Asia as it lends a rich and strong fragrance. Now-a-days, tea estates of Assam have also taken up agar plantation on fallow land and as shade trees. In our Manipur also, the Agar trees are very much suited in all our soil and climatic condition and hence large-scale agar plantation can be taken up over unused private, community and village barren land including the abandoned Jhoom and degraded forest areas.
As the intense researches in this field are going on, by planting as much as agar trees, one day we will be able to get 100% agarwood from our whole agar plantation and we may be able to earn a huge income from this Multi Million International Market of the incense and perfumes. In recent years, modern techniques and research have been able to induce the production of resinous wood by inoculating the tree with proprietary inoculants. This method of inoculation has turned the farming of agarwood into a very lucrative industry.
In addition, efforts have been organised for the replanting of Agar trees in the wild with the dual purpose of replenishing its dwindling numbers as well as for providing an alternative income for the rural farmers which will be a win-win situation in the environment prospective also. As per a report, the total area under illegal opium poppy cultivation in 2023-24 in Manipur was approximately 11,288 acres. And also, the India State of Forest Report, Manipur lost 52,000 acres of forest area between 2021 and 2025. All these degraded forest areas can be restored and bring back into a beautiful and best economic forests with agar plantation.
Agar trees are evergreen with straight boles having the aesthetic value and thus may be used as the large-scale roadside plantation also. Since, being a viviparous germination, creation of agar nursery seedlings would also not be a problem. Seeing the present-day demand, and easy for marketing, Agarwood will never be a problem but insuring only benefits in future. Therefore, everyone should take up for Agar plantation to have a beautiful environment and boomed with a bright economy in future.
REFERENCES:
- K. Hajra In: M. Ahmed, P. Gogoi, G.U. Ahmed (eds.) Proceedings of Seminar on Scope & Dimension of Agar (Aquilaria spp.) Plantation in NE Region, 22-23 Nov. 2000, All Assam Traders & Agar Oil Manufacturers Association, Nagaon, Assam, India.
- Saikia, M.L. Khan, Current Science, 2012.
- Hussain, O.P. Virmani, S.P. Popli, L.N. Mishra, M.M. Gupta, G.N. Srivastava, Z. Abraham, A.K. Singh; Dictionary of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plant, Lucknow, India, 1992.
- R. Bose, Science & Culture, 1934, 4(2), 89-91.
