Non-timber forest products

In short

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are all the goods of biological origin a forest yields other than wood for timber and pulp — bamboo, canes, resins, gums, oleoresins, tans and dyes, oilseeds, fibres, essential oils, medicinal plants, leaves, fruits, lac, silk cocoons, honey and wax. In Indian law the same basket is called minor forest produce (MFP), defined in Section 2(i) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and Section 3(1)(c) of that Act vests ownership and the right of collection and disposal in forest dwellers and the Gram Sabha. NTFPs matter because they give recurring annual income without felling the stand, employ a very large share of India's tribal households, and feed industries from shellac and katha to AYUSH drugs and agarbatti. The topic is examined in B.Sc Forestry (wood science and forest products, forest utilisation, agroforestry), in the Indian Forest Service and state forest-service papers, and in interviews for ICFRE/ICAR institutes, forest development corporations, TRIFED, FMCG and herbal-extract firms.

Explained

Definition, scope and classification

• NTFP: any product other than timber/industrial wood obtained from forests and forest-tree species, whether of plant or animal origin, harvested for subsistence, barter or sale. Terms used loosely as synonyms: minor forest produce (legal/administrative), non-wood forest products (NWFP, FAO — it excludes fuelwood and small wood, so NWFP ⊂ NTFP), special forest produce.
• FRA 2006 definition of MFP: all non-timber forest produce of plant origin including bamboo, brushwood, stumps, cane, tussar, cocoons, honey, wax, lac, tendu/kendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots, tubers and the like. Note it is plant origin — so honey and cocoons are in, but hides, horn and ivory are not MFP.
• Classification by origin: plant origin (the bulk) and animal origin (lac, honey, beeswax, tasar/muga/eri cocoons, horns, feathers).
• Classification by part used / nature of product:
  1. Structural/fibrous — bamboo, cane (Calamus spp.), sabai and bhabhar grass, munj, semul floss, bark fibre.
  2. Exudates — resins and oleoresins (chir pine, sal dhup, salai guggul), gums (karaya, ghatti), gum-resins (guggul), latex.
  3. Extractives — tans (babul, avaram, myrobalan, wattle bark), dyes (lac dye, catechu), katha and cutch.
  4. Essential oils — sandalwood, agarwood, lemongrass, citronella, palmarosa, eucalyptus, pine-needle oil.
  5. Oilseeds and fats — sal seed (sal butter), mahua, neem, karanja, kokum, pongamia.
  6. Edibles and medicinals — fruits, nuts, tubers, mushrooms, amla, ashwagandha, giloy, honey.
  7. Leaves — tendu (bidi wrapper), sal and siali (leaf plates), palm, bay leaf.
• Nationalised vs non-nationalised: several states nationalised high-value items (tendu leaf, sal seed, often gums) and trade them through state forest development corporations; the rest are "free" produce. FRA 2006 and PESA 1996 have shifted ownership towards Gram Sabhas and some states (for example Maharashtra and parts of Chhattisgarh) now let Gram Sabhas sell tendu directly — the position still differs state by state.

Major Indian NTFPs: species, product and processing

• Resin tapping methods: the traditional blaze (cup-and-lip) method removes a large bark chase and a thick wood shaving every few days — high injury, resin contaminated with bark. The rill method (developed in India, FRI/ICFRE) makes shallow V-shaped rills with a narrow blade, uses an acid (dilute sulphuric acid with surfactant) stimulant paste, and gives higher yield with far less damage, cleaner resin and a longer tappable life. The borehole method is used experimentally. Tapping is allowed only on trees above a prescribed girth, with a rest period after a tapping cycle.
• Oleoresin processing: settling and filtration, then steam distillation — the volatile fraction is turpentine, the residue is rosin. Typical split: rosin about 70–75%, turpentine about 18–22%, the rest water and dirt.
• Lac culture: inoculation of brood lac on pruned host branches, crawler emergence and settling, two strains — rangeeni (crops katki and baisakhi) and kusmi (aghani and jethwi); harvesting as ari (before emergence) or phunki (spent). Scraping gives sticklac → washing/sieving gives seedlac → heat or solvent refining gives shellac. ICAR-IINRG, Ranchi is the lead institute; Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha are the main producing states and India is the largest producer.
• Essential-oil extraction: steam/hydro-distillation for grasses and leaves; solvent extraction for concretes and absolutes (jasmine, agarwood); supercritical CO₂ for high-value oleoresins; expression for citrus peel. Recovery is reported as per cent of fresh (or oven-dry) raw material.
• Tendu operations: bushes are pollarded/burnt in the dry season to force fresh coppice leaves of uniform size; leaves are plucked, tied in bundles of 50, dried in the sun, turned, then bagged; 1,000 bundles make one standard bag.

Sustainable harvesting and yield management

• Principle: harvest must not exceed the regeneration or increment of the part taken. The destructive intensity rises in the order fruit/leaf < exudate < bark < root/whole plant — bark and root harvest (for example *Saraca asoca* bark, *Decalepis*, *Gloriosa* tubers) is the quickest route to local extinction.
• Bamboo: fell only culms 3 years and older, retain 6–8 healthy mature culms per clump as mother culms, cut 15–30 cm above ground just above a node, adopt the horse-shoe method — remove the congested culms from the centre and open the clump on one side, leaving the retained culms standing in a horse-shoe so the centre is accessible and new shoots are not damaged, and harvest in the dry season (November–February) when starch is low — this reduces borer attack and avoids damaging new shoots. Avoid cutting during the rainy shooting season; never clear-fell a clump.
• Felling/working cycles: bamboo 3–4 years; resin tapping in a block with rest years; tendu annual coppice; gum karaya blazes rotated around the bole with rest.
• Inventory for NTFP: stratified random sampling with nested quadrats — large plots for trees (resin, gum, seed), small plots for herbs and regeneration; record density, girth class, productive individuals per hectare, and yield per individual to estimate the annual harvestable crop.
• Phenology matters: collect at maturity — unripe sal seed gives low fat, premature amla is low in vitamin C, early-plucked tendu leaves tear.
• Post-harvest losses are the biggest practical leak: delay, poor drying, contamination and bad storage. Key controls are prompt shade/solar drying to safe moisture, clean containers, grading, and protection from insects and moulds (aflatoxin in oily seeds).

Law, policy and marketing in India

• Indian Forest Act, 1927 — "forest produce" is defined widely (Section 2(4)) and includes both timber and non-timber items; transit rules, royalty and permits for removal are framed under it and under state forest Acts/rules.
• Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980 (the former Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, renamed by the 2023 amendment) governs non-forest use of forest land; NTFP collection is not a diversion of land, so it continues under working plans and FRA rights.
• Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 — Section 3(1)(c) gives the right of ownership, access to collect, use and dispose of minor forest produce; the Gram Sabha is the authority for transit and sale within and outside the village. PESA, 1996 gave Gram Sabhas in Fifth Schedule areas ownership of minor forest produce.
• Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 bars collection inside national parks and restricts it in sanctuaries and tiger reserves; Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (as amended in 2023) governs commercial use of biological resources and benefit sharing through the NBA, State Boards and Biodiversity Management Committees with People's Biodiversity Registers.
• Indian Forest (Amendment) Act, 2017 removed bamboo from the definition of "tree" in the 1927 Act — bamboo grown on non-forest land needs no felling or transit permit; bamboo on forest land stays under forest law. National Bamboo Mission (restructured 2018) supports plantation, treatment and processing units.
• MSP for MFP scheme — Ministry of Tribal Affairs, implemented through TRIFED and state implementing agencies; it declares a minimum support price for a notified list of MFPs (expanded in stages from an initial 10 items to roughly 87; the list and the prices are revised by notification, so quote the current notification rather than a remembered rate). Van Dhan Vikas Kendras under the Van Dhan scheme give SHG clusters primary processing and value addition, and sell under the Tribes India brand.
• Other institutions: National Medicinal Plants Board (AYUSH) for medicinal species, Central Silk Board for tasar/muga, NABARD and state corporations for finance and trade, ICFRE institutes (FRI Dehradun, IWST Bengaluru, IFP Ranchi) and ICAR-IINRG for technology.
• Trade controls: export of some wild-collected species is restricted and plants such as agarwood (*Aquilaria*) and red sanders are CITES-listed, so permits are needed. GST is notified item-wise — most unprocessed forest produce is nil or at the lowest slab, while processed goods such as essential oils and shellac attract higher slabs (the slab structure has been 5%/18%/40% since 22 September 2025).

Quality, standards and grading

• Agmark grading under the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marking) Act, 1937 covers honey, some gums and oilseeds; FSSAI regulations set honey specifications (moisture, sucrose, HMF, C4-sugar adulteration test, antibiotic limits) and standards for edible forest produce.
• Bamboo: methods of test for bamboo (IS 6874), methods of test for split bamboo (IS 8242), preservation of bamboo for structural purposes (IS 9096), structural design using bamboo (IS 15912); bamboo construction is also covered in the National Building Code of India, 2016.
• Indian Standards also exist for gum rosin, turpentine oil, shellac grades, katha, sandalwood oil and extracted honey — several old numbers have been revised or withdrawn, so cite the current edition from the BIS catalogue rather than a remembered number.
• Export quality is judged on colour and clarity (rosin grades), acid and saponification value (rosin), life under heat and colour index (shellac), total santalol (sandalwood oil), citral content (lemongrass oil), tannin content (bark), viscosity and grit (gum karaya).
• Certification: FSC and PEFC non-timber certification, organic certification under NPOP, and FairWild for wild-collected medicinal plants exist and are voluntary market instruments, not legal requirements.

Advantages, limitations and comparison with timber

• Advantages: annual and recurring income; little or no capital; labour-intensive and hence pro-poor; harvested without felling, so carbon and canopy are retained; gives a livelihood stake that supports protection; fits agroforestry and joint forest management.
• Limitations: seasonal and fluctuating yields; thin, exploitative market chains with many intermediaries; weak grading and post-harvest infrastructure; low shelf life; destructive collection of bark and roots; difficulty of inventory and of fixing a sustainable yield; substitution by synthetics (synthetic resins, synthetic indigo) and by cultivated supply.

Key points

• NTFP — all biological forest produce other than timber/industrial wood; MFP is the Indian legal term, confined to plant origin plus lac, cocoons, honey and wax.
• FRA 2006, Section 3(1)(c) — ownership and right to collect, use and dispose of MFP; Section 2(i) gives the definition; the Gram Sabha is the authority.
• PESA, 1996 — Gram Sabha ownership of minor forest produce in Fifth Schedule areas.
• Indian Forest (Amendment) Act, 2017 — bamboo is no longer a "tree" under the 1927 Act, so non-forest-area bamboo needs no felling/transit permit.
• Rill method — shallow V rills with acid stimulant; higher oleoresin yield and much less injury than the blaze/cup-and-lip method.
• Oleoresin distillation — about 70–75% rosin, 18–22% turpentine, remainder water and dirt.
• Lac chain — brood lac → sticklac → seedlac → shellac; strains rangeeni (katki, baisakhi) and kusmi (aghani, jethwi); hosts palas, kusum, ber, semialata.
• Tendu standard bag — 1,000 bundles of 50 leaves = 50,000 leaves; bushes pollarded to force uniform coppice leaves.
• Bamboo rule of thumb — remove culms 3 years and older, keep 6–8 mother culms, cut above a node 15–30 cm from ground, work the clump horse-shoe fashion, harvest in the dry season.
• Recovery per cent is the single most used NTFP figure — oil, katha, kernel or seedlac weight as a percentage of raw material.
• Gum karaya from *Sterculia urens* by controlled blazing; gum ghatti from *Anogeissus latifolia*; katha/cutch from khair heartwood.
• Sal butter from *Shorea robusta* kernels is a cocoa-butter substitute; mahua seed oil is a soap and lamp oil, flowers are a food.
• Sandalwood oil comes from heartwood and roots; quality is judged on total santalol.
• MSP for MFP — Ministry of Tribal Affairs through TRIFED; notified item list and prices revised periodically; Van Dhan Vikas Kendras do SHG-level value addition.
• Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (amended 2023) — approval and benefit sharing for commercial use of biological resources; BMCs maintain People's Biodiversity Registers.
• Destructiveness order — fruit and leaf < exudate < bark < root/whole plant; bark and root collection needs the tightest control.
• Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 bars NTFP collection in national parks and restricts it in sanctuaries.
• FSC/PEFC NTFP, NPOP organic and FairWild certification are voluntary, used to reach premium and export buyers.

Formulas and examples

Example 1 — resin crop and distillation (chir pine, rill method). A working circle has 1,200 tappable chir pine trees; 85% are actually tapped and each yields 2.8 kg of oleoresin in the season.

• Trees tapped = 1,200 × 0.85 = 1,020.
• Oleoresin = 1,020 × 2.8 = 2,856 kg (2.856 t).
• Rosin at 72% = 2,856 × 0.72 = 2,056.3 kg; turpentine at 19% = 2,856 × 0.19 = 542.6 kg; balance 9% = 257.1 kg water and dirt.
• At illustrative mill-gate rates of ₹110/kg rosin and ₹130/kg turpentine: 2,056.3 × 110 = ₹2,26,193 and 542.6 × 130 = ₹70,538 → gross ≈ ₹2.97 lakh per season. (Rates are market-linked; use the current corporation rate in an exam answer only if given.)

Example 2 — essential-oil recovery and per-hectare oil yield (lemongrass). 520 kg of fresh lemongrass herb is steam-distilled and gives 3.64 kg of oil.

• Recovery = 3.64 / 520 × 100 = 0.70%.
• A plantation yields 25 t fresh herb per hectare per year in three harvests → oil = 25,000 × 0.0070 = 175 kg/ha/yr.
• At ₹1,200/kg, gross = 175 × 1,200 = ₹2,10,000/ha/yr; if collection, distillation and fuel cost ₹90,000/ha/yr, net = ₹1,20,000/ha/yr.
• Drying check: if 100 kg of fresh leaf (74% moisture, wet basis) is dried to 15% wet basis, dry matter = 26 kg, final weight = 26 / (1 − 0.15) = 30.6 kg.

Example 3 — lac yield ratio and shellac output (kusmi lac on kusum). 40 kusum trees are inoculated with 3 kg brood lac each and the crop yields 780 kg of sticklac.

• Brood lac used = 40 × 3 = 120 kg; yield ratio = 780 / 120 = 6.5.
• Seedlac at 68% of sticklac = 780 × 0.68 = 530.4 kg.
• Shellac at 90% of seedlac = 530.4 × 0.90 = 477.4 kg.
• Overall sticklac → shellac recovery = 477.4 / 780 × 100 = 61.2%.

Example 4 — sustainable bamboo harvest from a managed clump. A *Dendrocalamus strictus* clump carries 68 culms: 14 of the current year, 20 aged 1–2 years and 34 aged 3 years or more. Rule: harvest culms ≥ 3 years, retain 8 mature mother culms.

• Harvestable = 34 − 8 = 26 culms per clump; harvest intensity = 26 / 68 × 100 = 38.2% of standing culms.
• At 100 clumps per hectare: 26 × 100 = 2,600 culms/ha; at 15 kg green weight per culm = 39,000 kg = 39 t green/ha per cycle.
• On a 3-year felling cycle that is 39 / 3 = 13 t/ha/yr. At ₹4,000/t green, gross = ₹52,000/ha/yr.

Example 5 — tendu leaf collection earnings. A collector plucks 150 bundles of 50 leaves a day for a 20-day season; the state-notified collection rate is ₹400 per 100 bundles.

• Bundles = 150 × 20 = 3,000 bundles = 3,000 / 1,000 = 3 standard bags = 1,50,000 leaves.
• Earnings = 3,000 / 100 × 400 = ₹12,000 for the season.
• If the Gram Sabha sells the same 3 bags at ₹6,500 per bag under its FRA rights, sale value = ₹19,500, leaving ₹7,500 as the village's surplus after the collection wage. (Collection rates and bag prices are notified annually and vary by state.)

Ranges depend on site, age, season and plant; use the figure given in the question when one is supplied.

Where it is used

• State forest development corporations (for example MP State MFP Federation, Chhattisgarh, Odisha TDCC, Maharashtra FDC) — tendu, sal seed, gum and bamboo procurement, grading and auction; roles as range/collection-centre officer, procurement and quality officer.
• Resin and rosin industry — Uttarakhand and Himachal rosin and turpentine factories supplying paper sizing, soap, adhesive, printing ink and terpene chemical plants.
• Shellac and lac industry — Ranchi/Khunti belt; shellac for food glaze, polish, pharmaceutical coating and lac dye; ICAR-IINRG for technology and training.
• Herbal, AYUSH and FMCG supply chains — Dabur, Himalaya, Patanjali, Baidyanath and extract exporters buying amla, ashwagandha, giloy, gums and oils; roles in raw-material sourcing, QC and NMPB-supported cultivation.
• Essential oil and fragrance units — Kannauj and south Indian distilleries; sandalwood oil at Karnataka Soaps and Detergents and IWST Bengaluru; agarbatti and perfumery supply chains.
• Bamboo and cane sector — National Bamboo Mission units, agarbatti stick and board plants, Assam and north-east cane furniture, bamboo scaffolding and bamboo-composite housing.
• Tribal development and trade — TRIFED, Van Dhan Vikas Kendras, NGOs and FPOs organising SHG collection, grading, MSP operations and Tribes India marketing.

Interview questions

• Q: How does NTFP differ from non-wood forest produce? A: NWFP as defined by FAO excludes all woody material including fuelwood and small wood, whereas NTFP conventionally includes fuelwood, small wood, bamboo and cane — so NWFP is the narrower set.
• Q: Which Act and section gives forest dwellers ownership of minor forest produce? A: Section 3(1)(c) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, with MFP defined in Section 2(i); PESA, 1996 had already given Gram Sabhas in Fifth Schedule areas ownership of minor forest produce.
• Q: Why is the rill method preferred over the blaze method for pine resin? A: It removes only shallow narrow rills instead of a deep chase, so yield per tree is higher with less wood injury, cleaner resin, lower insect and fungal risk and a longer tappable life for the tree.
• Q: What are the products of oleoresin distillation and their proportions? A: Turpentine as the volatile distillate, roughly 18–22%, and rosin as the residue, roughly 70–75%, the balance being water and impurities.
• Q: What is lac yield ratio and what is a good value? A: Sticklac harvested divided by brood lac inoculated; roughly 4 or above is considered satisfactory and good kusmi crops can reach 6 to 8, depending on host vigour, strain and pest control.
• Q: Why is bamboo not treated as a tree any more in some situations? A: The Indian Forest (Amendment) Act, 2017 removed bamboo from the definition of "tree" in the Indian Forest Act, 1927, so bamboo grown on non-forest land can be felled and transported without permit; bamboo on forest land remains under forest law.
• Q: Why is bamboo harvested in the dry season? A: Starch and moisture content are lowest, so the culm is less attractive to borers and powder-post beetles and seasons better; it also avoids damaging the emerging shoots of the rainy season.
• Q: Which NTFP harvest practices are most destructive, and how are they controlled? A: Bark girdling and root or whole-plant removal, because the individual dies; controls are rotational partial bark harvest, prescribed girth limits, rest periods, cultivation of the species and substitution of leaf or fruit for bark where pharmacologically possible.
• Q: What does a standard bag of tendu leaves contain? A: 1,000 bundles of 50 leaves each, that is 50,000 leaves — the unit in which MSP and auction rates are fixed.
• Q: How is the MSP for MFP scheme operated? A: The Ministry of Tribal Affairs notifies a minimum support price for a list of MFP items; TRIFED and state implementing agencies procure through collection centres and Van Dhan Vikas Kendras, so collectors are not forced below the floor price.
• Q: What clearance is needed before a company commercialises a wild medicinal plant? A: Approval and benefit-sharing terms under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 as amended in 2023, through the National or State Biodiversity Board with the local Biodiversity Management Committee, plus CITES permits if the species is listed.
• Q: Why does NTFP income often fail to reach the collector even when the product is valuable? A: Long intermediary chains, no grading or primary processing at the village, poor storage and immediate cash needs force distress sale; the correction is collective sale by SHGs or Gram Sabhas, grading, primary value addition and MSP-backed procurement.

Common mistakes

• Treating NTFP and MFP as identical in law — MFP under FRA is restricted to produce of plant origin together with lac, cocoons, honey and wax, and excludes animal products such as hides and horn.
• Quoting rosin and turpentine the wrong way round, or adding their percentages to exactly 100 and ignoring the water and dirt fraction.
• Mixing moisture-content bases — wet-basis and dry-basis percentages are different numbers and the basis must be stated before any drying calculation.
• Computing recovery on fresh weight in one place and oven-dry weight in another, which makes two oil yields incomparable.
• Saying bamboo needs no permit anywhere after 2017 — the exemption applies to bamboo on non-forest land, not on forest land.
• Reporting an NTFP yield per clump, per tree or per bag without the denominator (clumps per hectare, trees tapped, bundles per bag), which makes the per-hectare figure meaningless.
• Clear-felling or indiscriminately cutting a bamboo clump, cutting below the first node, or leaving fewer than about six mother culms — all of which collapse the next crop.

Related topics

Wood anatomy and wood properties · Wood seasoning, preservation and composite wood · Forest policy, Acts and forest administration in India · Agroforestry and social forestry · Silviculture of bamboo and cane · Forest mensuration and inventory