Combined effect of biological and physical stress on artificial production of agarwood oleoresin in Aquilaria malaccensis

Abstract

Agarwood is the most expensive wood of the world and highly demanded wood in perfumery industry and ritual ceremonies of various religions. Agarwood is the infectious wood part of Aquilaria tree. Naturally, production of agarwood in Aquilaria takes 10-20 years of time and it can develop only in 1-2% of Aquilaria trees. Different types of biological, chemical and physical methods have been developed for artificial production of agarwood to fulfil the rising demand of the market. In the current article, we tried to explore combined effect of physical and biological stress in the form of stick method to improve agarwood production in Aquilaria malaccensis and compared it with well-known artificial fungal infection syringe method. Total 21 fungal strains were applied alone (syringe method) and with bamboo sticks (stick method). We found maximum infection occurred in stick method by fungi Penicillium polonicum AQGGR1.1 with 10 cm infection length. Artificial induction of marker compounds of agarwood, benzyl acetone and anisyl acetone were measured mostly in stick method, induced by 71.4% fungal strains grown on bamboo sticks, while alone only 42.9% fungi can induced in syringe method. Penicillium aethiopicum AQGGR1.2 found highly agarwood oleoresin inducing fungus in stick method and shown high potential agent in stick method for artificial production of agarwood.