Unfortunately in its native homeland, attempts to raise Hevea plantation-style are stymied by an unpleasant disease that runs rampant through the serried rows. As yet, this canker is not present in Southeast Asia where the majority of the world’s rubber now originates.
However, relying on one area for such vital production can be hazardous, as World War II proved when invasive Japanese forces overran the producing countries. Today, political instability has raised further worries of an assured supply. Then again, what will happen if – perhaps when – the South American disease reaches Southeast Asia?
The need to diversify sources of rubber has been acknowledged by U.S.-based tire companies. This has led to a revival of interest in guayule, a shrub native to the arid and semi-arid southwest U.S, and northern Mexico. During World War II, more than 1,000 scientists were involved in attempts to develop a rubber industry based on
Parthenium argentatum, as guayule is botanically known. Despite this enormous effort, all attempts were abandoned following hostilities and no less than 23,000 acres of the crop destroyed.
Yet until the Mexican Revolution, there had been a booming international industry in guayule. Indeed long before Columbus arrived to “discover” the Americas in 1492, Aztecs were familiar with the perennial plant. The very word guayule derives from the Aztec language Nahuatl,
ulli.
Towards the end of the last century, Arizona had been the centre of interest in commercial, albeit small scale, cultivation of
P. argentatum, as increasing numbers of people proved allergic to rubber sourced from
Hevea brasiliensis – 10 percent of healthcare workers, for instance, have proved to be so afflicted. Such is not the case with products based on extracts of guayule.
Now things are picking up again. Bridgestone Corporation, for example, last year established an experimental farm of almost 300 acres in Mesa, Arizona. Known as the Bridgestone Biorubber Process Research Center, it presently has more than two-dozen employees. It is ‘car news that you should care about, according to last month’s issue of
Popular Science.
So how did
Ficus elastica, the well-known houseplant, get its name? The tree, a form of fig native to tropical India and Southeast Asia, like
Hevea brasiliensis yields heavy white latex that coagulates into a brownish, somewhat elastic mass. Colonists to the area found that this could be used to erase pencil marks, rubbing them away, hence ‘rubber.’
