An invention of agarwood inducement created by a Vietnamese farmer

[Dinh xuan Ba]

Preface

On 20^th April 2014, The Vietnam Intellectual Property Association granted to Mr. Truong thanh Khoan ( fig 1), a Vietnamese farmer, a “trustworthy product” certificate on his inducer applied to Aquilaria trees and on cultivated Agarwood formed by using this inducert (fig 2). On 9^th June 2014, The National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (under The Ministry of Science and Technology) gave Mr. Truong Thanh Khoan a patent number 12835 about Inducement method on Aquilaria trees for creating cultivated Agarwood (fig  3). Unlike all inducers presently existing in Vietnam and around the world, Mr. Khoan’s inducer contains quintessential juice produced by ants, hereinafter referred to as “ant juice”. Mr. Khoan formerly spent 20 years in the forest, not only to seek for natural Agarwood, but also to gropingly look for inducers but his result was limited. Only after the day where he discovered a species of ant (nesting in Aquilaria tree) that has the ability of biological stimulation for Agarwood formation, he started to study their living habits in order to domesticate them and to create approriate conditions for them, so that they can produce ant juice that is a key component of a special inducer herinafter to be called as Ant-processed inducer (ApI). Based on this ApI, Mr. Khoan has succeed in creating Agarwood in many thousands of Aquilaria trees (fig 4, fig 5, fig 6) and now he has became a rich peasant intellectual, a Vietnamese billionaire. Right from September 12^th 2011, he applied to The Ministry of Science and Technology for soliciting an exclusive protection of his invention.  His ApI inducer has been successfully applied to some locations in Vietnam and has been being promoting to foreign countries. The purpose of this article is to try explaining scientific ground of this invention. If we can point out scientific foundation of this discover, we then can alter this unique creative achievement of pratical into an intellectual fortune, we also can assign to this  experiential finding a professional language, therefore we can develop this product inside and outside of Vietnam. To do that, we need to know some basic knowledges as follows:

• What is Agarwood inducement ?
• Association of ant-fungus mutualism