Agarwood / Tropical Forestry (PDF)

Rozi Mohamed is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Forestry, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She received her trainings from the Oregon State University, USA, in the fields of forest biotechnology and plant pathology.

Her research on Agarwood started in 2006. Agarwood is a non-wood product from the endangered Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees, highly prized for its use in fragrances and medicines. Her research projects were designed to answer questions such as identifying the triggers behind Agarwood formation. She applies molecular, genomics and tissue culture approaches to study the mechanism of Agarwood synthesis in Aquilaria. Special attention is given to the role of diverse fungi and bacteria, which is known to be useful pathogens for Agarwood inducement.

Being a forester and an ecologist herself, Rozi is especially interested in developing new methods for rapid detection of Aquilaria as a means to circumvent illegal Agarwood trade. Her work on Agarwood hasbeen recognized globally, as evident from the invitations she received to review manuscripts on Agarwood by various international journals. Recently, she organized the 1st International Scientific Symposium on Agarwood (ISSA 2013) at UPM, which received vast responses from the international Agarwood community, scientists and traders alike. Following this success, she will organize its sequel, the highly anticipated 2nd ISSA in 2016. 

“The book highlights information regarding ‘agarwood’ – fragrant natural product from trees of the Thymelaeaceae family, belonging to Aquilaria and related species. … this book can be considered as the first step to overcoming the lack of knowledge on Aquilaria and related agarwood species. The editor has brought to focus the incomprehension on agarwood species.” (S. Suresh Ramanan and Anatoliy A. Khapugin, Current Science, Vol. 113 (8), October, 2017)