Planting Aquilaria crassna to create agarwood naturally

Participating in the Dong Nai Province Agricultural Achievement Exhibition 2025, Toan Thang Agarwood Facility attracted many visitors to learn about and buy products. Photo: B.Nguyen

This young farmer also started a business to invest in a facility producing handicraft products from agarwood, bringing high value. In particular, the facility has 3 products including: agarwood beads, incense sticks with agarwood sticks, agarwood buds that have been certified as OCOP products (One Commune One Product Program).

Grafting and improving Aquilaria trees

Mr. Pham Xuan Toan recalls: “My family is originally from the old Phu Yen province, now Dak Lak province, which has a tradition of growing and exploiting agarwood in Vietnam, so I have known about agarwood and smelled its scent since I was a child. Later, my family moved to Long Khanh to start a business and bought 1.2 hectares of agricultural land to grow fruit trees. Because this is a barren hilly area with rocky soil, growing fruit trees is not effective. Therefore, in 2008, my family switched to growing Aquilaria trees.”

According to Mr. Toan, it took his family about 10 years to perfect the process of planting Aquilaria trees and creating agarwood on Aquilaria trees. Mr. Toan shared: The value of agarwood lies in the agarwood scent, so the more natural the tree is planted, the less use of fertilizers and chemicals to keep the agarwood scent pure. His family's agarwood forest is designed according to a circular economic model. He proactively implements disease prevention solutions rather than cures so that the agarwood forest can develop naturally. In each agarwood garden, he digs ponds to store water and raise fish, the main source of food for the fish is cutting weeds in the agarwood forest. The water source in the fish pond includes fish manure and a variety of microorganisms used to irrigate the agarwood forest, so the forest grows quickly and is always green.

Toan Thang Agarwood Facility has established a garden of the original variety of Aquilaria crassna, including about 200 original Aquilaria crassna trees of the Ky Hai Nam variety. Due to the market demand for Agarwood products not meeting the supply, the facility wishes to cooperate with many farmers to expand the planting area of the new Aquilaria crassna variety Ky Hai Nam.

When the Aquilaria tree is 5 years old, the grower must stimulate the tree to produce agarwood. The cost of buying chemicals to treat the Aquilaria tree to produce agarwood is usually very high, and there is still a risk of unsuccessful agarwood production. Throughout the process of growing Aquilaria, his family has researched and found a solution to use biological products to help the Aquilaria tree produce agarwood at a low cost; at the same time, the tree produces agarwood with a high rate.

After harvesting agarwood, growers often have to replant a new batch of Aquilaria trees. But Mr. Pham Xuan Toan chose to keep the Aquilaria roots and graft them to rejuvenate the Aquilaria forest. In 2018, by chance, he got a Aquilaria tree variety on Hainan Island (China). Mr. Toan experimented with grafting and improving the Aquilaria tree seedlings, using the roots of native Aquilaria trees, grafting them with Aquilaria trees from Hainan Island to create a new tree variety that he named Ky Hai Nam. The outstanding advantage of this new Aquilaria tree variety is that after only 3 years of grafting, the tree can produce agarwood and after about 6-7 years it can be exploited, reducing the time for planting and creating agarwood. In particular, this Aquilaria tree variety can use a physical solution that is closest to the natural way of creating agarwood, so there is almost no risk like when using biological and chemical solutions to create agarwood as before.

Investment in deep processing

After 10 years of growing Aquilaria trees, the facility began harvesting the first batch of agarwood trees. With a passion for agarwood, Mr. Toan went to learn and gain experience in making agarwood products. Initially, the facility mainly made bracelets from agarwood. When seeing the high market demand for products made from agarwood, the facility focused on investing in deep processing.

Mr. Toan commented: Since ancient times, agarwood has been the "king of wood", bringing lucky energy, emitting a luxurious and delicate fragrance, bringing many values to the connoisseur. Each agarwood core has countless shapes to create fine art products, so it is used to make products such as: agarwood statues, feng shui agarwood pieces, bracelets, necklaces, pendants, Buddha pendants for hanging on cars...

No part of the Aquilaria tree is discarded, the sapwood near the core can be ground into agarwood chips, incense, and buds... The agarwood dust collected by the facility is used to make incense or distill agarwood oil, which is worth hundreds of millions of VND per liter. The facility is processing about 50 product lines from agarwood. In particular, the high-end product line made from Ky Hai Nam agarwood is very popular in the market, bringing much higher economic value than agarwood grown in the traditional way.

Mr. Pham Xuan Toan compared: With the traditional Do Bau variety, if agarwood is created well, after about 8 years, 5-6kg of agarwood can be harvested, and sold on the market for more than 2 million VND. The Ky Hai Nam Do Bau variety after 7 years can only yield about 1kg of agarwood, but the market price is 25-30 million VND/kg because this agarwood is close to natural agarwood, has a very fragrant smell, and a lot of agarwood essential oil.

The facility's products sell well on e-commerce platforms, supplying to many provinces and cities across the country. Toan Thang Agarwood Facility has expanded the area of 11 hectares of Aquilaria growing area, including 2 hectares of Ky Hai Nam Aquilaria growing area.

Mr. Tran Ba Linh, Chairman of the Long Khanh Ward Farmers' Association, commented: Toan Thang Agarwood Facility with its agarwood growing and processing model is a typical advanced model of the locality. In particular, the solution of grafting and renovating do bau seedlings, creating a new variety of Ky Hai Nam is an effective economic model that the locality encourages to replicate in the coming time. The facility also has 3 products that have achieved 3-star OCOP certification. Accordingly, the locality, including the Long Khanh Ward Farmers' Association, is very interested in and supports the facility to participate in trade and trade promotion programs to promote and build brands for local specialty products. Typically, the facility has just been selected by the Farmers' Association to participate in the Dong Nai Province Agricultural Achievement Exhibition in 2025.

Binh Nguyen

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/kinh-te/202511/trong-do-bau-tao-tram-thuan-theo-tu-nhien-cb12256/