There was always a dark brown piece of wood locked in my grandfather's sandalwood box. When I was a child, I thought it was an ordinary piece of charcoal, until one rainy morning, I saw him burning incense and washing his hands, and the rising smoke turned into the shape of mountains, rivers, lakes and seas. "This is a breathing forest fossil," he said with sparks in his eyes.

I finally understood this shock when I went deep into Vietnam's Phu Son rainforest 20 years later. I witnessed the incense collectors climbing 30-meter-high agarwood trees with their bare hands, and using the "look, smell, ask and feel" method passed down by three generations to identify the veins of the incense - those golden silk honey hidden deep in the tree core are the soul crystallization of the trees in exchange for a hundred years of pain.

We created the "Agarwood Treasure" not only to continue the millennium incense road, but also to build a bridge connecting the past and the present:

🔻 Keeping the art: Cooperating with the Hainan Li ethnic group incense making tribe to digitally record 17 endangered ancient processes

🔻 Inheritance: Every piece of collection sold will fund 1 square meter of tropical rainforest protection area

Agarwood ingishts ---About the Global Agarwood Market

The once-quiet markets of cultivated agarwood, traditionally reliant on inoculation techniques and various "secret recipe" treatments, are now being challenged by China's innovative cultivated Kynam. This shift is akin to the evolution from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs). After years of development, the cultivated Kynam market has reached its zenith, leading to a steady decline in prices as production scales up. This is welcome news for price-conscious buyers, as larger pieces of cultivated Kynam are now approaching the price range of smaller wild Kynam—treasured possessions of seasoned merchants and collectors.

Looking ahead to 2025, with a fresh start after the challenging COVID years, the reopening of borders and visa-free travel to agarwood-producing countries present new opportunities. We can anticipate the reintroduction of some old agarwood stocks into the market. Often, farmers and sources aim to sell these stocks closer to retail prices—a trend supported by the growing influence of social media platforms and the popularity of online purchasing. These factors are reshaping how agarwood is marketed and accessed, bridging the gap between producers and a global audience.

Modern knotting technology：

In view of many problems such as the traditional aroma-forming methods and semi-cut drying methods, hole-cutting methods, fire-burning methods, etc., the aroma-forming rate is not high, the quality of the aroma is unstable, and it is difficult to produce aroma in an industrialized manner. Based on the discovery of the mechanism, the Institute of Medicinal Plants of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Nanhai Branch innovatively invented the whole-body aroma-forming technology of agarwood. The whole-body aroma-forming technology has become the main method in my country and the world. The most widely used and fully traceable aroma-forming technology in the agarwood production area, the high-efficiency aroma-forming technology has been promoted industrially. The standardization of incense tablets, factory operation procedures and specifications have been established. There are more than ten incense cutting and raw material processing workshops distributed across the country. Through large-scale, intensive and streamlined operations, the production cost of agarwood raw materials has been greatly reduced.

Agarwood-forming technology：

Based on the agarwood-forming mechanism of "adverse stress of the agarwood group-microbial transformation", and based on the study of the biosynthesis pathway of 2-(2-phenylethyl) chromones and sesquiterpenoids, an agarwood-forming agent (ITBB-001) was developed. The agarwood-forming agent is injected into the tree body, which makes the agarwood tree quickly enter an adverse state, activates the activity of some key synthases of the agarwood's active ingredients, and accelerates the synthesis of agarwood substances.