From the past until now, Agarwood is always considered a special item of the forest that nature has favorably bestowed on people. Agarwood is created naturally from the Aquilaria crassna tree. But now, due to the increasing demand and the shortage of supply, people have researched to develop many new ways to quickly stimulate the process of forming agarwood on the tree.
- Physical method
This is the simplest method, easy to follow, but with a low probability of success. The main way to do this is to cut the drums, scrap, nails … to stick to the tree trunk to create a mechanical wound for the tree to create agar.
Accordingly, the grower uses wood to drill holes with a diameter of over 1cm and keep the borehole from healing so that bacteria and fungi can easily penetrate. The second way is taking the rusted iron wedge to close the tree to create a wound. About after 3 years there will be rays of agarwood surrounding the wound.
- Chemical method
This is an extremely efficient and fast method, as chemicals pumped into the plant are often characterized by stimulating Agarwood formation.
People often drill into the trunk not more than 1/3 of the trunk radius, about 1- 1.5m from the ground, drill holes in a circle around the body, holes alternating, dog feet (ie intersecting) slide up to the top. Then growers use a chemical stimulating to create sediment poured into the drill. With this method, if successful, after about a year, it will start to appear low hair. And of course, this can be called “quick but not sure about quality”. The disadvantage is that when pumping these chemicals into the trunk, the time of harvest can lead to the residue of toxic chemical components in Agarwood such as SO4. , PO3, Cl, NO2. These chemicals seriously affect the quality of output products.
- Biological method
This method is becoming more widely used and popular because it has solved most of the disadvantages left by other methods. Not only is the success rate high, but when harvested, there is no residue of harmful chemicals, effectively ensuring the quality of the output.
As mentioned above, Aquilaria crassna tree is infected by microorganisms or fungi, it will secrete a resin containing essential oils. After a long time, it will create Agarwood. Taking advantage of this, biological methods have been applied to cultivate and exploit Agarwood. People use probiotics, typically fungi or bacteria, to infect the plant.
Currently, people are trying hard to discover new types of probiotics to cultivate agarwood, ensuring productivity. A typical example is the discovery of the ability of an ant (nesting on a tree) to biologically stimulate to produce agarwood. Growers began to study the habit of these ants to tame them, and then allowed them to produce a type of ant fluid that could be used to stimulate agar formation in trees. This application is very successful and famous, sought to be bought in many countries around the world.
No matter which method, agarwood is formed based on the available natural principles. It is increasingly improved by human influence to stimulate faster the process of creating cultured agarwood. Using many methods and applying science and technology to increase the yield of agarwood is a promising point. It indicates clearly the growth and capacity of Vietnam’s agricultural sector. However, everything has both sides, advantages and disadvantages. People should be alert, need to have a reasonable form and level of exploitation, not only think about their own short-term benefits but leave potential long-term risks.
