Newspiece from the latest Australian Sandalwood Network newsletter (www.sandalwood.org.au) authored by UWA Prof Julie Plummer ...
"From the work shop it also seems that tropical sandalwood has lots of other problems, lack of heartwood formation even in quite mature trees, uneven heartwood formation and it seems to be prone to a fungal disease which rots the heartwood and manifests itself as large bracts up the trunk . We hope spicatum is not so unfortunate to be plagued with similar problems."
The UWA researchers also found fungal infection was strongly encouraged by pruning of lateral branches, a practise common to all the Indian sandalwood plantations ...
"With Indian sandalwood, if the tree is infected through its root system it is less of a problem than if it is infected from a wound up the trunk as this often results in an entry point for a secondary infection . This type of infection may come from a pruning wound."
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Spicy success for Sandalwood team at UWA Professor Julie Plummer
The Sandalwood team at the University of Western (UWA) Australia led by Professor Julie Plummer and Associate Professor Emilio Ghisalberti have found the genes that code for santalene bio synthesis - a key ingredient in sandalwood oil.
Dr Chris Jones ( UWA) , Jess Mondiadis , a phd student and Katherine Zulak from the University of British Columbia (UBC) have discovered the genes for santalene synthase from Indian, Australian and Austrocaladonicum sandalwood , respectively.
This effort is strongly supported by collaboration with Prof Joerg Bohlmann a leading terpene specialist from UBC and Dr Liz Barbour of the Forest Products Commission (FPC), who is now assisting UWA with industry partner ships . This completes a set of valuable genes from this unique genus and allows further research on the control of oil bio synthesis to continue. Chris, Jessie and Katherine returned to Prof Bohlemanns lab in Canada during 2010 to search for the P450s which convert santalenes to santalols - the scent of sandalwood and to present their findings at the prestigious Banff Plant Metabolism conference.
Dr Liz Barbour and Dr Treena Burgess of Murdoch University have also been examining fungal diseases in sandalwood, a problem highlighted by an earlier RIRDC project looking at heartwood development in Indian sandalwood . The team has recently been awarded and Australian Research Council Linkage proposal with (FPC), Elders forestry, Murdoch University and UBC to further examine the relationships between fungal infection and wood production under plantation systems
Recent developments with the discovery of genes in the sandalwood oil biosynthetic pathway have opened a new understanding of oil quality and the market scope of these sesquiterpene compounds. The workshop was opened by David Hartley the general manager of FPC who told us that in WA there is presently 5000 ha of album with spicatum at 15000 ha. The aim of the work shop to highlight the advantages the industry can attain by maintaining and accelerating a focussed research program... Much of the focus was on the Indian Sandalwood which is now being called tropical Sandalwood but with lessons learnt on this species being able to be transferred to spicatum .We learnt that the genetic diversity of album is very narrow whereas the spicatum is very diverse .Disappointingly we also heard that the team undertaking the research in WA have been pipped at the post by a large pharmaceutical firm in Europe who have patented the gene first .This means that if anyone wants to work on the gene has to seek their permission and probably pay for the privilege.
The ability to synthetically make the compounds which give sandalwood its unique scent is worrying as now any sort of shredded wood could potentially be converted into agbartti by adding this synthetic product. Consensus in the room seemed to be that there will always be a market for the real and natural product at the quality end of the market. So we hope that is true. Keeping the establishment and maintenance costs of plantations down and producing a sustainable and maybe an organic or spray free crop will be the key to the success of spicatum. It seems the cost of establishing and maintaining tropical plantations is large.
From the work shop it also seems that tropical sandalwood has lots of other problems, lack of heartwood formation even in quite mature trees, uneven heartwood formation and it seems to be prone to a fungal disease which rots the heartwood and manifests itself as large bracts up the trunk . We hope spicatum is not so unfortunate to be plagued with similar problems.
Spicatum is at least growing in its natural environment where it has evolved over thousands of years.
Work has been done to identify these fungi species. We are not sure if spicatum will have some of these problems. But spicatum grows in a dry environment which cannot be so conducive to fungal growth you would think. Spicatum unlike album is also an endemic plant to our region which has evolved in conjunction with the native bush and its hosts for a long time. Amongst those inter relationships there must be many fungal species good and bad. Any introduced plants are always untested against our native pests and diseases. Apparently album plantations are regularly sprayed with phosphoric acid to control dieback infestations. Spicatum is susceptible to some generic fungal diseases such as Anthracnose which also affects woody crops such as avocados.
Maybe the wide genetic diversity of spicatum will give us the scope in the future to select or even manipulate those genotypes which are resistant to fungal infections.
One interesting point was that sandalwoods reaction to being infected with a fungal disease is to increase its heartwood production and therefore its oil. With Indian sandalwood, if the tree is infected through its root system it is less of a problem than if it is infected from a wound up the trunk as this often results in an entry point for a secondary infection . This type of infection may come from a pruning wound. It seems that album is more intensively managed than spicatum which often involves a lot of pruning.
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