Agarwood plantations go beyond providing a solution to prevent loss of agarwood tree species in our forest. They can also provide sustainable financial incentives and livelihoods for local communities, while restoring and conserving ecosystems.
Below are key factors that we must overcome to develop the Agarwood Industry in sustainable manner:
- Quality Planting Materials: Quality Planting Material may be defined as ‘the production of uniform, healthy, disease-free planting material raised through seed or vegetative methods with an overall goal to raise the physiological and phytosanitary quality of the plant available to stakeholders to increase productivity’.
Planting material of authentic vegetative or seed origin produced in advanced technology nurseries or tissue culture labs, with proven track record of high survival percentage in the field, faster growth, higher yield, resistance to pest and diseases, adaptability to local bio-physical, climatic and socio-economic conditions, and with high market demand. It should originate from properly established seed orchards, clonal orchards, produced by advanced technology nurseries.
Correct identification of tree species should be done by an acknowledged expert in tree taxonomy. The use of DNA barcoding for precise identification is a modern technology that could be further developed and used to confirm the species identity.
Genetically superior trees at the mature stage of growth and with the flowering cycle documented should be used for multiplication in accredited regional/provincial nurseries. Establishment of clonal and seed orchards at the nurseries, research institutes, and agricultural universities will ensure that tested seed and clones are available for mass propagation.
Correctly identified seeds and genetically superior clones of a tree species obtained will be mass propagated and the planting material conforming to the quality standards will be labelled as Certified Planting Material by certified nurseries. - Plantation Management: Substantial scientific data is used when establishing and managing plantations, starting with the soil, fertilisers, irrigation, light, symbiotic relationship of species, agroforestry system, and conditions of a site. Suitable species of trees are selected to match these conditions, as well as the appropriate spacing between trees and best planting methods. The preparation of a site must be considered as well, and if vegetation control is necessary to create an environment for new tree seedlings to grow. Sometimes it will be determined that land is not suitable to have trees planted and should be left in its current state to support any identified Species-at-Risk.
- Agarwood inducement Technology: Difficulties accessing technologies and inoculant formulae have discouraged farmers from participating in planting agarwood. Top quality agarwood requires long fungi attack and tree defense mechanism processes as they occur in nature. Even though revenues from agarwood can range from millions to hundreds of millions of pesos during harvest seasons, the long waits involved discourage farmers from developing agarwood.
- Fluid Extraction Technology: In general, the agarwood extraction method depends on the purpose of the extract. The agarwood essential oils are obtained through hydrodistillation, or steam distillation. The chemical constituents of agarwood usually obtained from the solvent extraction, such as acetone, methanol, ethanol and water or supercritical fluid extraction. Various extraction process such as maceration, soxhlet, supercritical fluid, ultrasonic-assisted, microwave-assisted, and high-pressure processing extractions are used to get the desired extract/compounds.
- Analytical Laboratory Services:
- Product Development: Product development is the entire process of researching, designing, creating, testing, marketing, and selling new products. Research and development is essentially the first step in developing a new product, but product development is not exclusively research and development. It is the entire product life cycle, from conception to sale. Product development is also not exclusive to designing, implementing, and selling new products. Existing products can go through product development to revamp old features or add new features so the product sells better or adds greater value to consumers. Any time a new product is created and sold—or any time an existing product has added features and is resold—it is going through product development.
- Market access: Market access refers to the ability to sell goods and services across borders. Market access can be used to refer to domestic trade as well as international trade, although the latter is the most common context. The ability to sell in a market is often accompanied by tariffs, duties, or even quotas, whereas free trade implies that goods and services flow across borders without any extra costs imposed by governments. Even so, market access is seen as an early step toward deepening trade ties. To help farmers, particularly small farmers market their products and that will promote sustainable agarwood production.