A Study of Agarwood Induction of Aquilaria Sp. Using Fungal Inoculation

Lee, Neville Yunn Junn (2023) A Study of Agarwood Induction of Aquilaria Sp. Using Fungal Inoculation. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

Agarwood is a highly valuable resinous part of the Aquilaria tree which is highly demanded by the market for perfumery production, religious and cultural activities, as well as traditional medicine. Agarwood must undergo a laborious, up to 30-year process to be produced naturally, therefore this study aims to stimulate agarwood production more rapidly by fungal inoculation method. In this study, we used four fungal strains – Fusarium, Penicillium, Alternaria and Aspergillus, isolated from various vegetables and fruits to inject and inoculate Aquilaria sp. with the goal of artificially inducing the production of agarwood. The inoculations were done in two categories, singly and combinations which were Fusarium with Alternaria, Penicillium with Alternaria, Penicillium with Aspergillus and Alternaria with Aspergillus, with the amount of 20 trees for each single strains respectively and 10 trees for each combination respectively. The wounded and inoculated samples developed a recognisable discoloration zone around the injection sites. Among the inoculations, Alternaria together with Aspergillus has shown the most decent result after 5 months of inoculation which the discolouration zone forms a clear margin around the agarwood in the tree. Furthermore, DNA of the fungal strains that we used were extracted using CTAB method, amplified by PCR and sent for Sanger gene sequencing. Agarwood collected were processed with hydrodistillation with Clevenger apparatus and Soxhlet extraction for the collection of agarwood oil.