Sustainability of Sandalwood is now a major challenge for many essential oil-bearing crops, and the growth of aromatherapy has exacerbated the problem. This especially applies to wild grown plants such as Santalum album. This is a threatened species in Asia due to decades of over-harvesting and smuggling. However, large-scale, sustainable cultivation has recently been established in Australia. One Australian producer now has a standardized essential oil that meets FDA requirements for botanical medicines. This “model” meets both the challenges of sustainability and that of batch variation in medicine. Santalum album essential oil has sedative, calming and anxiolytic properties. The study of psychodermatology suggests that the combined action of sandalwood oil on the psyche and the skin partly explains its success in treating skin conditions.
