BIFFA wood vinegar: Improved quality by studying products of natural origin

Plant protection products of natural origin are the result of the project “Study on the process of producing wood vinegar from eucalyptus material” by Binh Dinh Fertilizer and General Services Joint Stock Company (BIFFA) performs. The product has brought unexpected benefits to both the economic and environmental aspects of the company.

BIFFA is a unit with a tradition of producing bio-wood charcoal from eucalyptus trees. In order to meet the requirements of export product quality, and find a way to handle emissions in production, the company’s product development department has researched to create new products. The wood vinegar was born to serve the purpose of soil improvement, plant protection, stimulating growth, preserving food, and stimulating the ability of pet food digestion, reducing the bad smell of waste and clean the environment.

Wood vinegar (also called pyroligneous acid) is a brown liquid produced from the distillation of wood and other plant materials. Wood vinegar includes many types of organic compounds, but about 80-90% of the ingredient is water. The remaining 10-20% includes many other components as alcohol, ester, acid, phenol, aldehyde. The rich ingredients in wood vinegar are acetic acid (3-5%) and phenol (about 5%).

Bio-wood vinegar is produced by liquefying waste gas from the biochar pyrolysis furnace derived from eucalyptus wood. The gas condenses through the distillation method. The product was tested in some organic vegetable gardens, helps in the banishment, good prevention of some pests and diseases, stable vegetable gardens; Test in some livestock households for good deodorizing results.

Since 2016, Binh Dinh Fertilizer and  General Services Joint Stock Company (BIFFA) in collaboration with the Tropical Agriculture Research and Consultancy Center, with the support of Japanese experts studied and successfully produced the wood vinegar products in Vietnam. Immediately after successful trial production, wood vinegar products were tested by Tropical Agriculture Research and Consultancy Center and BIFFA on a variety of plants such as rice and fruit trees (dragon fruit, longan, custard apple, mango, guava, lemon, oranges, tangerines, grapefruit), vegetables (leafy vegetables and fruits of all kinds), pepper and coffee. At the same time, the product is also used in composting, processing molds, treating mouse and cockroaches in the house all very well.

Although the BIFFA and TARRC products of wood vinegar are still in the process of implementation, many crops have shown a positive effect on the ability to control fungi such as dragon fruit spot browning; black soot and aphids on custard apple, guava, orange, lemon, grapefruit; downy mildew and green aphids on a gourd, pumpkin, melon fruit, and melon pear. Especially, at the dilution level appropriate wood vinegar (1:70), root rot disease of Phalaenopsis orchids in the nursery orchids is also significantly improved.

The cultivation of organic vegetables using BotaniGro bio-organic fertilizer and wood vinegar in pest control has shown the importance of organic fertilizers as well as herbicides to plant health and productivity, quality of vegetables. Specifically, wood vinegar at dilution level 40 – 60 times is effective in preventing diseases for spinach, amaranth and bitter melon with the number of sprays periodically 7 days/times. Besides, the application of wood vinegar combined with neem oil in disease prevention for plants helps to significantly improve the quality of arable land.

Thanks to the above advantages, BIFFA’s wood vinegar products are much potential to become biological products to replace toxic pesticides, while ensuring the development of agricultural products for quality and food safety.

Productivity and Quality Office