Essential Oil of Eaglewood Tree: a Product of Pathogenesis

The essential oil of eaglewood tree (Aquilaria agallocha Roxb.) has been considered to be a pathological product. An investigation was carried out to study the difference in composition of oils obtained from healthy, naturally infected and artificially inoculated eaglewood using GC and GC/MS analyses. This investigation showed a marked difference in the oil compositions among the treatments with regards to their quality. Valerianol (3.0%) and tetradec-anioc acid (7.1%) contents were recorded higher in the oils of naturally infected plants than in that of healthy ones (0.1% and 6.9%, respectively). Pentadecenoic acid was totally absent in the oils of healthy, whereas it was found in a greater amount (6.8%) in the oil of naturally infected plants. In contrast, dodecanoic acid (3.1%), pentadecanoic acid (6.2%), hexadecanoic acid (31.5%) and octadecanoic acid (4.1%) were found in a higher amount in the oils of healthy plants, while the oils obtained from naturally infected plants contained lower amounts of these components (2.5%, 4.8%, 20.0% and 1.0%, respectively). The oils obtained from the inoculated plants showed almost similar distribution of the components with healthy plants.