At an agarwood/gaharu plantation on Hainan island
Agarwood oil (known as gaharu in Malaysia) has been produced from wild trees of the Aquilaria spp. since time immemorial. Whole trees which are suspected of containing dark heartwood are chopped down to carve out the latter. The dark heartwood contains resinous compounds which are produced by the tree in response to injury during its growth. It is within the resinous compounds that the valuable agarwood oil is to be found. The dark wood is usually separated from non-resinous wood to obtain agarwood of the highest price. This wood is fragmented and used in incense or simply slowly combusted to produce a scent valued in the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and Indo-China. If a liquid oil product is desired, the wood is steam distilled to extract a dark colored oil at a very miserly yield rate (thus making this oil extremely expensive).
Nowadays, with wild stands of the Aquilaria tree very rare and endangered, much effort has been made through out Indo-China to try and replicate nature by raising plantations of these trees, hopefully with the same quality of resinous heartwood. The current situation is probably that there is much more hope than outcomes. On Hainan island, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg is planted, raised to some 5 years old, deliberately injured and then left to grow for a further 5 or so years in the hope that the injuries have induced the formation of resinous heartwood.
On
my trip to Hainan island for other business, I was fortuitously
able to visit one such agarwood plantation where some measure of
success in obtaining resinous heartwood and oil has been
achieved.
Inoculated planted agarwood trees of more than 5
years age
Multiple wounds
are deliberately made on each tree to induce a response by the tree to injury
Resinous heartwood
formed over many years as a result of injury to the tree. This wood is carved
out from other non-resinous wood by hand.
The steam
distillation rig used to extract the valuable oil.
The
plantation manager with the results of a previous distillation.
The oil is the dark fluid at the bottom.
Treasure and bounty await those who are able to successfully master the art/technology of plantation agarwood.