Planting money (Agarwood) trees doesn’t come without its challenges. One of these challenges is the inoculation. The Aquilaria tree has to be induced with a infection to induce production of agarwood (the resin), otherwise the tree would be quite worthless. Not all Aquilaria trees produce agarwood, they have to be infected by a certain kind of stress before they start “fighting back” with resin production to counter the infection. And even so, there is no set volume in the resin production (meaning each tree will produce its own amount).

Newbies blinded by the agarwood get-rich-quick scheme are often scammed through these so-called high quality inoculant which “guarantees” high rates of return. There are “many roads that lead to Rome”, with trial and error being part of the journey but there are no guarantees.

The inoculation cost for a 5-8 years old tree in Malaysia ranges 30 ~ 50USD /tree inclusive labour (Time of writing … Dec 2018). Being a layman grower, this can be an astonishing figure if you have 1000 trees to inoculate. Even so, there is another barrier if you are able to sell the inoculated product.

Following link explains further “Natural infection without inoculation“.

… To be continued …

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