Teak Information

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Plantation Areas and Planting Rates

Teak plantations constitute about 8 percent of the total plantation area in countries with climates suitable for teak growing. In 1995, about 94 percent of global teak plantations were in tropical Asia, with India (44 percent) and Indonesia (31 percent) accounting for the bulk of the resource. Other countries of the region with significant planted teak resources were Thailand (7 percent), Myanmar (6 percent), Bangladesh (3.2 percent) and Sri Lanka (1.7 percent). About 4.5 percent of global teak plantations were in tropical Africa (largely in moist West Africa, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria) and the remainder were in tropical America (mostly in Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago) and the Pacific Islands.

FAO´s most recent regional estimates (Table 1) suggest that the increase in the global net area of teak plantations has been negligible since 1990 (FAO, 1995), despite a reported rate of new planting of more than 100,000 ha. per year. This anomalous result reflects discrepancies in historical reported national plantation areas as well as the fact that a large, although unquantified, part of the reported new planting is actually replanting of existing plantations following harvest. The rate of new plantation establishment in many tropical countries does, however, appear to have slowed notably since 1990. Most planting reported in 1995 was in India, Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia in tropical Asia, and in Costa Rica and Panama in tropical America.

TABLE 1. Estimated net plantation area of teak by subregion, 1995 (1,000 ha)
Subregion Estimated net area of teak plantation Estimated annual planting
West Sahelian Africa 4.02 0
East Sahelian Africa 14.85 -
Moist West Africa 87.88 4
Southern Africa 2.80 0
Tropical Africa 109.55 4
South Asia 1,099.60 55
Continental Southeast Asia 302.28 26
Insular Southeast Asia 706.01 12
Tropical Asia 2,107.89 93
Tropical Oceania 3.03 0
Central America 22.29 4
Caribbean 8.06 -
Tropical South America 2.72 0
Tropical America 33.07 4
TOTAL 2,253.54 101

Today, teak ranks among the top five tropical hardwood species in terms of plantation area established worldwide.


Main tropical hardwood species in terms of plantation area, 1995
Species Area (ha.) Percentage of tropical plantations
Eucalyptus spp. 9,949,588 17.7
Acacia spp. 3,904,307 7.0
Tectona grandis 2,246,559 4.0
Casuarina spp. 787,200 1.4
Dalbergia sissoo 626,020 1.1
Gmelina arborea 418,050 0.7
Swietenia macrophylla 151,214 0.3
Terminalia spp 303,957 0.5