A Simple Metabolite Profiling Approach Reveals Critical Biomolecular Linkages in Fragrant Agarwood Oil Production from Aquilaria malaccensis - A Traditional Agro-Based Industry in North East India

Agarwood production is a highly profitable agro-based industry in the Southeast of Asia, with a worldwide market of US$ 6-8 billion. Aquilaria spp. are woody plants which are the source of fragrant resins pro-duced by the plant due to fungal infection. Mechanism of agarwood production is not well understood, but agarwood oil is in great demand in perfume industry and traditional medicine. Traders judge the quality of the resinous agarwood without any standard proce-dure. The oil is extracted from the agarwood following a step of fermentation. In the present study, we determined the profile of metabolites in the extracts of raw and fermented agarwood as well as three com-mercial grades of agarwood oil from Assam, by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolo-mics analysis coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. The importance of fermentation in agarwood oil production was noted, as three agarwood aromat-ics, viz. 10S, 11S-Himachala-3(12), 4-diene, agarospi-rol and i-propyl 12-methyltetradecanoate were formed during fermentation of agarwood. The study also con-firms that metabolite profiling can be a simple and effective method to distinguish grades of agarwood oil and their commercial products.