A joint venture between Lismore’s Southern Cross University and the tea tree oil industry will work towards producing a more suitable oil for the cosmetics industry.
The project is worth $2.2m over three years and will aim to clone plants that producer lower levels of methyl eugenol, as required by the European Union.
Project leader Dr Mervyn Shepherd, Southern Cross Plant Science, said it was imperative the $30m Australian industry could respond with new varieties of tree oil as soon as possible.
As a result the project will also develop techniques for clonal propagation to speed up the time it takes to get product to market. Currently the industry uses seedling cultivars.
“By using a cloning method we can increase the uniformity of plants and nearly halve the time it takes to release a new cultivar,” Dr Shepherd said.
Tony Larkman, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Tea Tree Oil organisation, said the industry had to work smarter.
