consultancy services

The only supply of Sandalwood in Australia is from the wild in WA and this harvest is controlled with an accepted limit of 2000 tonnes collected per year with a percentage of this as dead wood. In recent years considerably less than the tonnage limit has been collected. Not all is exported. The Sandalwood oil company ( Mount Romance ) processed 500 tonnes and is planning to double this amount in future years.

The tropical Sandalwood, containing twice the oil of the Australian Sandalwood, does not have the quantity of pharmaceutical fractions in the oil that is unique to Australian Sandalwood. S. album is a high aromatic oil producer and is worth twice as much as S. spicatum per tonne. The Sandalwood industry overseas to our North is a shambles with over collection, disease and the problems of a highly populated countryside not prepared to tie up land for the length of time necessary to grow plantation timber

At about three years of age Sandalwood start producing nuts. These are good eating and have potential to be a dry land Macadamia crop if the pharmaceuticals in the nut do not make them too valuable for this use. Refer to the work done at Curtin University by Yandi Liu and Robert Longmore. ( Papers published www.nectarbrook.com )

In the future the only supply of Sandalwood might have to be plantation grown.

The Quandong has long been a favorite of people from the arid areas. Over the last twenty years an effort has been made to get Quandong as a managed horticultural crop. Some success has been achieved but generally as the trees are based on wild collected seed, quality and production is poor. Small numbers of quality grafted trees have been available.

Nectarbrook Discovery plantation has eighty of the grafted cultivar Powell's # 1 and is using a carefully searched out quality seedling cultivar as the pollinator to these trees.

The seedlings, ( "Nectarbrook cultivar" ), generated from this cross pollination are producing a number of commercial quality trees suitable for grafting.

Nectarbrook Discovery Plantation has developed the following products from Quandong in addition to the usual cooked fruit, pie filling and jam. Chutney, meat glaze, meat seasoning base, ice cream topping, Quandong sorbet, fruit lolly, glacé fruit, after dinner alcoholic fruit wine. ( provisional patent on this recipe)

All the fruit from the plantation is processed into a jam and sold under their registered trademark "Aridland Australia"