Development of Fragrant Agarwood Production for Business of Agarwood Growers at Boh-Ploy Subdistrict, Trad Province

Abstract

     The objectives of this research were to study socio-economic background of the agarwood growers for business at Boh-Ploy Subdistrict, Trad Province, their agarwood growing, agarwood formation and agarwood oil distillation, their development, including their problems. The data were collected from 89 agarwood business growers by using interviewing schedule and statistically analysed for percentage and arithmetic mean. The results revealed that 89 persons were classified to be 95.5% agarwood growers for seedling sale, 5.6% agarwood formation makers and 5.6% agarwood oil distilled producers. For agarwood growers for seedling sale, 1 1/2 - 10 years was their working duration, 56.2% getting their knowledge by self-study. All of them could sell seedlings and 91.1% got profit. For agarwood formation makers, 1/2 - 6 years was their working duration, 3.4% getting their knowledge by self-study, and 3.4% of them could sell their product and got profit. For agarwood oil distilled producers, 1/3 - 10 years was their working duration, 2.2% getting their knowledge by self-study and their relatives, 4.5% of them could sell their product and got profit. The development of the agarwood growers for seedling sale was achieved by using their own seeds more than seeds from other sources, to increase number of agarwood formation trees from 50-100 trees to 100-100,000 trees, and to increase number of agarwood oil distilled pots from 2-10 pots to 3-1,000 pots.