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While world supplies of natural sandalwood may be dwindling, women can still buy perfumes, such as Obsession by Calvin Klein and Opium by Yves St Laurent, which contain the essential oil, thanks to researchers such as Chris Jones, a PhD candidate in the School of Plant Biology at The University of Western Australia (UWA).

Once widespread throughout southern WA, but almost wiped out in the grainbelt due to clearing for farmland, sandalwood, Santalum spicatum and it’s northern relative, S. album, are making a comeback as plantation trees.

“In WA’s Kununurra area close to 2000 hectares of Santalum album  have been planted and more than  4000 hectares of S. spicatum have been planted in the wheatbelt area of southern WA,” Mr Jones said.

Continual harvesting has depleted world supply and WA, with a growing plantation industry, holds 50 per cent of the world-traded market in this timber.

For his thesis, Mr Jones used a three part approach to understand the underlying causes of oil yield variation in the plantation sandalwood, S. album: genetic studies; extractable oil yield and composition, and isolation of oil biosynthesis genes.

Genetic diversity of S. album and two other tropical species from the WA Forest Products Commission arboretum at Kununurra were compared.  Santalum spicatum, a distant relative from the semi-arid areas of southern and western Australia, was used for comparison. Based on DNA banding patterns, the collection was categorised into 19 broad genetic groups.

“Essential oil yields from these genetically similar trees varied greatly both within and between groups, suggesting a significant environmental influence,” Mr Jones said.

Ancestral lineages were compared, with results suggesting low genetic diversity within the Australian
S. album collection was attributed to incomplete seed sourcing and highly restricted gene flow during evolution of the species.

“Based on this study and others, S. album may have come from an overseas dispersal out of northern Australia or Papua New Guinea three to five million years ago,” Mr Jones said.

“Total extractable oil content varied enormously between trees, but individual chemical profiles were almost identical, suggesting limited genetic diversity in this region of the genome.”

In the future high oil yields may be selected for, along with shortened harvest times, which were traditionally 40 to 60 years after planting: “We may be able to shorten rotations to 10 or 15 years in high yielding varieties.”

Mr Jones explained that sandalwood had a role in revegetating marginal lands in WA, creating biodiversity in the grainbelt and potential use for carbon sequestration.

“It’s not just about using sandalwood for perfume, incense and woodwork. There are other uses for this versatile tree.”

UWA, in collaboration with the WA Forest Products Commission, was awarded an Australian Research Council linkage grant, enabling Mr Jones to continue his research.

As the 2005 recipient of the Mike Carroll UWA Travelling Fellowship, he spent six months in the laboratory of Professor Jorg Bohlmann, an expert in the field of plant biotechnology at the University of British Colombia, Vancouver, Canada.

Media references

Professor Kadambot Siddique , Telephone (+61 8) 6488 7012, Mobile 0411 155 396
Dr Chris Jones , Telephone (+61 8) 6488 1992