A while back we covered a paper in Annals of Botany on tapping frankincense for resin. The mapping of the canals in the tree promised to improve the efficieny of tapping. Now in Tree Physiology Mengistu et al. have a paper Frankincense tapping reduces the carbohydrate storage of Boswellia trees, that’s recently become free access.
Mengistu et al. show that tapping for resin reduces the trees’ stores of starches and sugars. They also show that stores deplete anyway, as the tree uses them itself. The resin is part of a store that tides the tree over the dry period, and get replenished during the wet period.
The paper ties in well with the Annals paper. In that Tolera et al. argued resin tapping could be done just as effectively with fewer cuts. Fewer cuts means less chance for disease to enter the tree. In the TreePhys paper Mengistu et al. argue that fewer cuts also means that trees have more of a chance to hold on to necessary stores of carbon, if they need them.
The evidence is that intensive tapping of Boswellia papyrifera is a problem and that the trees need some respite. However, there is also a religious imperative to tap them. Balancing supply and demand looks likely to remain a contentious problem.