NANOTECHNOLOGY FOR HIGH QUALITY AGARWOOD RESIN FORMATION

Agar, a highly priced non-timber forest product traded internationally that is extremely rare. However, as only infected trees produce agar; uninfected trees are of negligible commercial value. Due to the nature of its very low formation artificial inoculation technologies are becoming more popular than depending on natural agar formation. In this article we describe the effect of different chemicals and hydrosols of nanoparticles (NPs) as inocula in artificial agar production. We applied those inocula into the xylem-phloem layer of total 45 (forty-five) agarwood trees at 8 (eight) different gardens of Bangladesh through transfusion set or by special technique to artificially inoculate them. We successfully prepared platinum, gold, silver and iron oxide NPs (IONPs) hydrosols with an average core diameter 2.1± 0.4 nm, 2.8± 0.5, 4.3± 0.8 and 8.5±1.1 nm respectively and applied them as inocula. Only in case of platinum and IONPs the white wood became gray to black colored around the zone of application, mostly in the longitudinal direction within three months whereas the traditional iron nailing method takes more than three years. Some water-soluble chemicals inocula especially iron containing but chloride free mixed inocula were also very effective to produce agar. The produced agar has the similar physical and fragrant properties as produced by natural agar formation or iron nailing method.