Aquilaria malaccensis Lam. Encycl. 1:49, t. 356. 1783
Family: Thymelaeaceae Juss.
Ayurved Name: Agaru [Bhavprakash]
Hindi Name: Agaru
Description: http://nlam.in/plant.php?00ec53c4682d36f5c4359f4ae7bd7ba1
Agarwood refers to a dark resinous heartwood of trees belonging predominantly to the genus Aquilaria (A.malaccensis and some other Indo-malaysian group) These trees have relatively light and pale colored heartwood but when they get infected with a parasitic ascomycetous mould, Phaeoacremonium parasitica, a dematiaceous (dark-walled) fungus, the tree's immune system secrets a resin high in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding the fungal growth, a process called tylosis. This process dramatically changes the unaffected light color heartwood to pale beige or dark brown/ black with increase in its mass and density. This resin is commonly known as gaharu, jinko, aloeswood, eaglewood, agarwood, or oudh (Arabic) The resin yields a volatile oil which is valued in many cultures for its distinctive fragrance, medicine and spiritual uses. In natural forest only about 7% of the trees are infected by the fungus which makes this oil highly expensive (US$50,000 to US$80,000 per litre.).
There are 17 species in the genus Aquilaria and eight are known to produce agarwood.Though Agarawood can be produced from all species, A.malaccensis is considered prime while A.cressna and A.sinensis are also harvested. Aquilaria species that produce agarwood are found throughout Asia, while occur naturally in South and Southeast Asia. The Indian sub-continent was the main source of agarwood for many centuries but as trees became scarce in the middle of the 20th century, extraction intensified in Indo-china. Later on it was extended to Indonesia and Malaysia. Today Agarwood plantations exist in a number of countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Vietnam.
OIL EXTRACTION
There are three methods through which agarwood oil is distilled namely, hydro-distillation, steam distillation and super critical CO2 extraction. The most common methods of distillation are hydro-distillation and steam distillation. The oil is graded as per distillation cycles, the ebst from the first and goes on. Older trees have a higher resin content and just like a wine, old resin gets better with age. Oil coming from steam distillation is said to lack the three-dimensional smoky quality which comes from hydro-distilled oil. In both methods, after the oil has been distilled, it is filtered, sunned, and aged for a while. The more the oil aged, the better it will smell
WHY ITS SO EXPENSIVE
Agarwood has very low yield and its extraction process is labour intensive whih makes it an luxurious commodity. From 20kg of very low grade resinous wood only 12ml oil can be produced. Similarly the total yield of agarwood (Oudh) oil for 70 kg of wood will not exceed 20 ml. In natural forest only as rare as 7% of the trees are infected by the fungus in natural way. Thus, agarwood develops very, very slowly over time, typically several hundred years. In ancient times the highest quality oudh was procured from trees older than 100 years and this quality certainly cannot be matched as of present. To gauge the prices approximately 25 years ago 1kg of an entry level (e-grade) was priced around 400-500$ and the same would now cost around 2200$. The highest quality yielding Agarwood species (A. malaccensis) is protected worldwide under the CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) convention as well as by the World Conservation Union, IUCN. A.crassna was listed as an endangered species few years back by the Vietnamese Government but is now listed as a protected species in Vietnam.
ADULTERATION AND SUBSTITUTES
Agarwood is highly expensive to synthesize as the major chemical sesquiterpenes of the resin are very complicated in structure. This has led to chemical substitute flood the market to make affordable perfumes and incenses though the lack the quality and ethos of the natural product. Agarwood perfumes are seldom pure agarwood oil, but instead use an alcoholic or non-alcoholic carrier, such as sandalwood oil. The cheapest agarwood perfumes are either synthetic or a blend of oils, each with different qualities and fragrances.
QUALITY CHECK
Natural wild agarwood
Cultivated
USE IN MEDICINE
Agarwood oil can be applied directly to the skin. Pure agarwood oil has a slow release effect lasting at least 8 hours. It is hence useful in rheumatism, asthma, carminative and diuretic. It is also used as anti-convulsant as well as an aphrodisiac. Its use as aromatherapy helps treat anxiety, stress, depression and other nervous system disorders. Agarwood oil is useful to treat liver cirrohsis, kidney disorders, lung and stomach tumor. Internally the oil is used to treat bronchial asthma and certain ethno-medicine surveys also supports its use as a female contraceptive. The use of Agarwood is also documented to treat dropsy and as a tonic taken particularly during pregnancy, after childbirth and for diseases of female genital organs Powdered heartwood is useful to treat diarrhea, dysentery, vomiting and anorexia. The Sahih Muslim (18th cent), refers to the use of agarwood for the treatment of pleurisy and its use is referenced in the Ayurvedic medicinal text the Sushruta Samhita. Agarwood is prescribed in traditional East Asian medicine to promote the flow of qi, relieve pain, arrest vomiting by warming the stomach, and to relieve asthma. Malaysians used agarwood mixed with coconut oil as a liniment, and also in a boiled concoction to treat rheumatism and other body pain The bark devoid of oil is useful to treat kidney failures or people undergoing dialysis. Agarwood is used in certain Ayurved formulations (Chyavanprasha, Arimedadi Taila and Mahanarin Taila).
Dosage
USE IN TANTRA AND MEDITATION
Gautum Buddha considered that aroma of Agarwood is itself capable to put one to "Nirvana". Pure agarwood oil is also burned as incense, especially in Japan. It is used in spiritual ceremonies or holy occasions as a temple offering in the Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist tradition. Burning of Agarwood is used in Tantra as it has a warming and centering effect on chakras and in certain mudras and kriyas along with oil pushes the ascetic into deep meditative states.
USE IN PERFUMERY
The use of agarwood for perfumery extends back several thousands of years and is mentioned in Gandhashastra The Egyptians are believed to have used agarwood incense as part of their death rituals more than 3,000 years ago. Both agarwood smoke and oil are customarily used as perfume in the Middle East . In India, various grades of agarwood are distilled separately before blending to produce a final ‘attar’. Minyak attar is a water-based perfume containing agarwood oil, which is traditionally used by Muslims to lace prayer clothes. An important use of agarwood is the production of incense.Irregular chunks of agarwood, usually a few cms long and weighing 10-200 g, may be cut or broken into smaller pieces and then burned, usually in a specially made incense burner. Agarwood powder and dust cannot be burned directly in incense holders, but can be used to make incense sticks or coils for indoor fragrance, and are used for religious purposes by Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. The oil is mainly used in the Arab world where it is in high demand. It is by far the most precious essential oil with prices reaching as much as ten times that of sandalwood oil. The largest market for top class incense is Japan with its long tradition in incense making. Both the Arab countries and Japan are interested in high quality agarwood and manufacturers in these countries prefer to process the raw material themselves. This also avoids the mixing of high grade agarwood with wood of lower quality.
USE AS RELICS & ORNAMENTS
Aquilaria bark has been reported to be used to make tea boxes (19th cent). Since the wood is light its use for furniture is ruled out but small ornamental boxes are possible. There is a considerable number of craft shops offering religious agarwood sculptures, usually Buddhist figures. Although a proportion of immature agarwood is used in this trade, most statues are not made with agarwood, owing to its soft and flaky properties, which make it unsuitable for carving. Instead, tropical hardwoods are treated to resemble agarwood. The wood is laced by injecting oil or tar into tree trunks and may also be impregnated with agarwood perfume.As with carvings, most agarwood rosary and ‘worry beads’ offered for sale are fake, owing to the cost of shaping and drilling perfectly round beads of authentic agarwood. Instead, other dark woods may be submerged in agarwood oil for several weeks until the fragrance of agarwood has been absorbed and these are then used in place of agarwood. Authentic agarwood bead necklaces cost approximately $1500/kg
OTHER USES
The use of agarwood bark as a writing material has also been documented extensively and agarwood is used for chronicles of important and sacred religious books.
Family: Thymelaeaceae Juss.
Ayurved Name: Agaru [Bhavprakash]
Hindi Name: Agaru
Description: http://nlam.in/plant.php?00ec53c4682d36f5c4359f4ae7bd7ba1
Agarwood refers to a dark resinous heartwood of trees belonging predominantly to the genus Aquilaria (A.malaccensis and some other Indo-malaysian group) These trees have relatively light and pale colored heartwood but when they get infected with a parasitic ascomycetous mould, Phaeoacremonium parasitica, a dematiaceous (dark-walled) fungus, the tree's immune system secrets a resin high in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding the fungal growth, a process called tylosis. This process dramatically changes the unaffected light color heartwood to pale beige or dark brown/ black with increase in its mass and density. This resin is commonly known as gaharu, jinko, aloeswood, eaglewood, agarwood, or oudh (Arabic) The resin yields a volatile oil which is valued in many cultures for its distinctive fragrance, medicine and spiritual uses. In natural forest only about 7% of the trees are infected by the fungus which makes this oil highly expensive (US$50,000 to US$80,000 per litre.).
There are 17 species in the genus Aquilaria and eight are known to produce agarwood.Though Agarawood can be produced from all species, A.malaccensis is considered prime while A.cressna and A.sinensis are also harvested. Aquilaria species that produce agarwood are found throughout Asia, while occur naturally in South and Southeast Asia. The Indian sub-continent was the main source of agarwood for many centuries but as trees became scarce in the middle of the 20th century, extraction intensified in Indo-china. Later on it was extended to Indonesia and Malaysia. Today Agarwood plantations exist in a number of countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Vietnam.
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| A.malaccensis (Image credit: Chuang Ti Fei) |
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| A.crassna (Image Credit: Gardonology.org) |
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| A.sinensis (Image credit: Chong Fei) |
 | |||
| Agarwood (Image credit :Godasagardener) |
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| Light colored bark without resin |
OIL EXTRACTION
There are three methods through which agarwood oil is distilled namely, hydro-distillation, steam distillation and super critical CO2 extraction. The most common methods of distillation are hydro-distillation and steam distillation. The oil is graded as per distillation cycles, the ebst from the first and goes on. Older trees have a higher resin content and just like a wine, old resin gets better with age. Oil coming from steam distillation is said to lack the three-dimensional smoky quality which comes from hydro-distilled oil. In both methods, after the oil has been distilled, it is filtered, sunned, and aged for a while. The more the oil aged, the better it will smell
 |
| Oil Extraction (Image Credit:Gerard A. Persoon) |
WHY ITS SO EXPENSIVE
Agarwood has very low yield and its extraction process is labour intensive whih makes it an luxurious commodity. From 20kg of very low grade resinous wood only 12ml oil can be produced. Similarly the total yield of agarwood (Oudh) oil for 70 kg of wood will not exceed 20 ml. In natural forest only as rare as 7% of the trees are infected by the fungus in natural way. Thus, agarwood develops very, very slowly over time, typically several hundred years. In ancient times the highest quality oudh was procured from trees older than 100 years and this quality certainly cannot be matched as of present. To gauge the prices approximately 25 years ago 1kg of an entry level (e-grade) was priced around 400-500$ and the same would now cost around 2200$. The highest quality yielding Agarwood species (A. malaccensis) is protected worldwide under the CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) convention as well as by the World Conservation Union, IUCN. A.crassna was listed as an endangered species few years back by the Vietnamese Government but is now listed as a protected species in Vietnam.
 |
| Naturally infected (Image credit:fragranita.com) |
ADULTERATION AND SUBSTITUTES
Agarwood is highly expensive to synthesize as the major chemical sesquiterpenes of the resin are very complicated in structure. This has led to chemical substitute flood the market to make affordable perfumes and incenses though the lack the quality and ethos of the natural product. Agarwood perfumes are seldom pure agarwood oil, but instead use an alcoholic or non-alcoholic carrier, such as sandalwood oil. The cheapest agarwood perfumes are either synthetic or a blend of oils, each with different qualities and fragrances.
QUALITY CHECK
Natural wild agarwood
- Untouched by human intervention
- Classical veined and grain patterns on wood
- Resin (30-50x optical lens) shows brownish-red, sparkling latex like substance
- Under UV light shows the dark green veins and naturally light yellow oil pores can be seen
- Natural wild-types of fragrance
- Sinks in water
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| UVlight projection (Image credit:scent) |
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| Natural Agaru sinking in water (Image credit:scent) |
Cultivated
- Planting and/or injecting the mould to tree to induce or speed up resin formation.
- Cheap (50-100$kg)
- The resin has many man made holes for chemical inoculation
- There is another variety called Agarwood stimulus where the oudh isnot procured from Aquilaria family but mostly from crocodile wood. This resin has fish-smell like milk substance which can be poisonous.
- Cultivation oudh produces straight fine lines (20-50x optic) and totally dark 'chemically poisonous' oil pores.
- Will not sink. There is an indonesian variety which will sink and is laced with chemical to induce smell.
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| Cultivated with holes (Image credit:scent) |
USE IN MEDICINE
Agarwood oil can be applied directly to the skin. Pure agarwood oil has a slow release effect lasting at least 8 hours. It is hence useful in rheumatism, asthma, carminative and diuretic. It is also used as anti-convulsant as well as an aphrodisiac. Its use as aromatherapy helps treat anxiety, stress, depression and other nervous system disorders. Agarwood oil is useful to treat liver cirrohsis, kidney disorders, lung and stomach tumor. Internally the oil is used to treat bronchial asthma and certain ethno-medicine surveys also supports its use as a female contraceptive. The use of Agarwood is also documented to treat dropsy and as a tonic taken particularly during pregnancy, after childbirth and for diseases of female genital organs Powdered heartwood is useful to treat diarrhea, dysentery, vomiting and anorexia. The Sahih Muslim (18th cent), refers to the use of agarwood for the treatment of pleurisy and its use is referenced in the Ayurvedic medicinal text the Sushruta Samhita. Agarwood is prescribed in traditional East Asian medicine to promote the flow of qi, relieve pain, arrest vomiting by warming the stomach, and to relieve asthma. Malaysians used agarwood mixed with coconut oil as a liniment, and also in a boiled concoction to treat rheumatism and other body pain The bark devoid of oil is useful to treat kidney failures or people undergoing dialysis. Agarwood is used in certain Ayurved formulations (Chyavanprasha, Arimedadi Taila and Mahanarin Taila).
Dosage
- The dosage of agar wood resin (agaru) is 125 mg to 1500 mg.(not exceed from 3gms a day).
- The internal dosage of pure agar (oudh) oil is 1 to 5 drops. (not exceed from 10 drops a day).
USE IN TANTRA AND MEDITATION
Gautum Buddha considered that aroma of Agarwood is itself capable to put one to "Nirvana". Pure agarwood oil is also burned as incense, especially in Japan. It is used in spiritual ceremonies or holy occasions as a temple offering in the Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist tradition. Burning of Agarwood is used in Tantra as it has a warming and centering effect on chakras and in certain mudras and kriyas along with oil pushes the ascetic into deep meditative states.
USE IN PERFUMERY
The use of agarwood for perfumery extends back several thousands of years and is mentioned in Gandhashastra The Egyptians are believed to have used agarwood incense as part of their death rituals more than 3,000 years ago. Both agarwood smoke and oil are customarily used as perfume in the Middle East . In India, various grades of agarwood are distilled separately before blending to produce a final ‘attar’. Minyak attar is a water-based perfume containing agarwood oil, which is traditionally used by Muslims to lace prayer clothes. An important use of agarwood is the production of incense.Irregular chunks of agarwood, usually a few cms long and weighing 10-200 g, may be cut or broken into smaller pieces and then burned, usually in a specially made incense burner. Agarwood powder and dust cannot be burned directly in incense holders, but can be used to make incense sticks or coils for indoor fragrance, and are used for religious purposes by Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. The oil is mainly used in the Arab world where it is in high demand. It is by far the most precious essential oil with prices reaching as much as ten times that of sandalwood oil. The largest market for top class incense is Japan with its long tradition in incense making. Both the Arab countries and Japan are interested in high quality agarwood and manufacturers in these countries prefer to process the raw material themselves. This also avoids the mixing of high grade agarwood with wood of lower quality.
USE AS RELICS & ORNAMENTS
Aquilaria bark has been reported to be used to make tea boxes (19th cent). Since the wood is light its use for furniture is ruled out but small ornamental boxes are possible. There is a considerable number of craft shops offering religious agarwood sculptures, usually Buddhist figures. Although a proportion of immature agarwood is used in this trade, most statues are not made with agarwood, owing to its soft and flaky properties, which make it unsuitable for carving. Instead, tropical hardwoods are treated to resemble agarwood. The wood is laced by injecting oil or tar into tree trunks and may also be impregnated with agarwood perfume.As with carvings, most agarwood rosary and ‘worry beads’ offered for sale are fake, owing to the cost of shaping and drilling perfectly round beads of authentic agarwood. Instead, other dark woods may be submerged in agarwood oil for several weeks until the fragrance of agarwood has been absorbed and these are then used in place of agarwood. Authentic agarwood bead necklaces cost approximately $1500/kg
OTHER USES
The use of agarwood bark as a writing material has also been documented extensively and agarwood is used for chronicles of important and sacred religious books.
 |
| Buying authentic oil in Nagaland |
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1 comment:
Very Informative. Thanks for sharing.
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