not all peaches and cream in the ord

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.