Agarwood More Precious Than Gold
Agarwood are harvested from the wild and because it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see whether a tree contains agarwood or not most of the Aquilaria trees are chopped down indiscriminately.
Since thousands of years, there has been an ever motivating expedition for agarwood exploitation across Asia as traders continuously search for untouched forests containing Aquilaria trees. The trees were fetching high prices and as a result, the news about agarwood harvesting spread like ‘gold fever’. Large amounts of money were offered to the forest natives, the traditional producers of agarwood.
For some years the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has listed all Aquilaria species in its Appendix II to control the import and export of agarwood.
Fake Agarwood
Agarwood trading becomes more and more lucrative in the market due to its rare existence and value. Fake agarwood products start to flood the market. These products are in fact made from non-infected Aquilaria wood which has been impregnated with cheap oil and coloured by human interventions. It requires a trained professional to differentiate real agarwood from these fake agarwood using smell and physical observations.
Some fake sellers sell resinous wood piece of Excoecaria Agollocha tree in agarwood market and call it agarwood. Excoecaria Agollocha also known as fish poison has a milky sap which is poisonous. Although it belongs to the same botanical class as agarwood producing trees but it is under a different classification.
Vietnam Agarwood 