Oud/ agarwood/ Aquilaria malaccensis
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A backgrounder
As in 2023
Rajeev KR, January 27, 2023: The Times of India
From: Rajeev KR, January 27, 2023: The Times of India
Oud’s enchanting fragrance has wafted around the world for millennia and its trade has thrived since ancient times. Now, many farmers in ‘God’s Own Country’, smitten by the allure of the ‘wood of the Gods’, are increasingly taking to growing the Aquilaria malaccensis tree — native to Assam and Southeast Asia — for its precious dark fragrant resinous wood, which has been valued across various civilisations for its spiritual and medicinal uses.
Oud or agarwood is no ordinary fragrant wood. It has a mythic reputation with a revered mention in seminal texts on Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, ranging from multiple references in the Mahabharata to the Song of Songs of the Old Testament and from Buddhist birth stories to Hadiths in Islam.
The warm, woody scent of oud has been central to Arabian culture and social life for ages, making it the most expensive raw fragrance ingredient in the world, with its oil used to make luxury perfumes and bark to produce incense burnt at homes during auspicious occasions.
Called ‘liquid gold’ in the Arab world, top-quality oud is a high-value material in international markets. Agarwood chips fetch up to Rs 2.5 lakh per kg and its oil up to Rs 10 lakh per kg at markets in the Northeast and double that amount in international markets, as per the agarwood promotion policy 2020 of Assam, the agarwood capital of India.
Of late, the cultivation of Aquilaria trees has gained popularity in Kerala, partly driven by the sagging fortunes of rubber cultivation. For instance, Saji P Eliyas from Thiruvananthapuram, who cleared his rubber plantation, now has around 6,000 agarwood trees at his 10-acre farmland in Palode. “Many farmers are trying their luck by foraying into agarwood cultivation in the state. We have formed a society to help farmers and within two years the number of members has risen to 350,” says Saji who is also the president of the Kannur-based Kairali Agarwood Farmers Association. He says the association members have been in touch with farmers in Assam for obtaining saplings and technical knowhow.
Dwindling stock
The huge demand for agarwood globally had led to indiscriminate felling of trees in their wild habitats in South and Southeast Asia following which it was included in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) list and in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species.
The dwindling stock of trees in the wild and growing demand had spurred cultivation in many agarwood-growing areas.
But the cultivation of agarwood has a catch as healthy Aquilaria trees do not produce these fragrant compounds. The resinous heartwood is formed as an immune response to an attack from fungi or an injury by a borer insect.
In natural forests, only up to 10% of the trees become infected and produce agarwood. Farmers have been using the artificial inoculation method by intentionally infecting the trees with fungi after drilling holes in the trunk and injecting a fungal inoculant, which sets off the immune reaction that leads to the creation of the aromatic resins in its heartwood.
Kozhikode native Mathew Vadakkedath had been one of the early movers in the field and had planted more than 40 agarwood seedlings sourced from Kollam after seeing a newspaper advertisement in 2003. Now, he has 30 trees ready for harvesting in his backyard in Kodenchery panchayat.
“Now, the trees have reached 80-90cm in girth and those who have come from Assam have told me that they don’t have such big trees there,” he says. Mathew says he sold 22kg of oud harvested from two fallen trees at Rs 60,000 per kg. He has planted another 800 trees, which are nearly three years old.
Ideal conditions
TN Manohara, a scientist at the Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Bengaluru, who has done research in reproductive biology and histochemistry of agarwood, says as the tree is native to the Indo-Malayan region, Kerala has suitable climatic conditions for its cultivation except in extremely cold or hot places.
He says he got to know about the growing interest in agarwood cultivation in Kerala when he received more than 400 calls in a single day from all over the state after his mobile number was mentioned in an article.
“I’m ready to help farmers, but middlemen should not be there. Now, I’m sharing information on WhatsApp groups of farmers. There are many people who are trying to exploit the interest of farmers and one should be vigilant and ensure that they get the right planting material and also good quality inoculum as it is a long-term crop,” he says.
He adds that farmers’ collectives can play a vital role, including in setting up distillation facilities and in marketing.
Manohara says the Rain Forest Research Institute in Jorhat, Assam, has been providing training to farmers as well as prospective entrepreneurs in developing bio formulations for artificial fungal inoculation on oud trees. He says that the cost of inoculum would work out to only Rs 500, excluding labour charges, for a tree if sourced through government agencies.
Saji Eliyas says there have been instances of people fleecing farmers by charging as much as Rs 20,000 to inoculate a tree.
