Abstract

S. M. C. U. P. Subasinghe and D. S. Hettiarachchi

Agarwood is a resin produced by certain species of family Thymalaeaceae due to a self-defence mechanism. Most species of Aquilaria and a few species of Gyrinops, Aetoxylon and Gonystylus are capable of producing agarwood. Gyrinops walla, a member of the family Thymalaeceae is recorded only in the wet zone of Sri Lanka and very rarely in southwest India, has not been previously studied to identify its ability of producing agarwood. Therefore the present study was the first ever to conduct and identify the production of agarwood in G. walla and the quality of its resins. Six G. walla trees growing in two distinctive areas of the wet zone of Sri Lanka were used for the present study. All six trees had natural wounds occurred sometime before the sample collection due to abrasions or fallen branches. The dark coloured tissues of the affected areas were carefully collected without cutting the trees and resins were extracted by solvent extraction method. The extracted resins were analysed using gas chromatography to identify the different compounds. Finally these compounds were compared with that of selected Aquilaria species. The results revealed a strong similarity of resin compounds of G. walla with that of Aquilaria species which are commercially used to collect agarwood. Further studies should be conducted to identify the effects of artificial resin induction methods on G. walla that are already used on Aquilaria species.