Latex and Natural Rubber

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) researchers are part of a multi-institution team working to bring rubber production to the United States and better secure the supply chain for this critical material.

The team is supported through the “Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security” (TARDISS) Engineering Research Center (ERC) through the U.S. National Science Foundation. Headquartered at Ohio State University, TARDISS will receive $26 million over five years with the ability to renew for the same amount over another five years.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a 5-year investment of $104 million, with a potential 10-year investment of up to $208 million, in four new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) to create technology powered solutions that benefit the nation for decades to come.
One of the four new centers is TARDISS: Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security. The Ohio State University (OSU) partnered with Caltech, North Carolina State University, Texas Tech University, the University of California Merced, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Case Western Reserve University for this new center. This makes OSU the only university in the nation to lead 2 ERCs simultaneously. Faculty members in the Food, Agriculture and Biological Engineering Department led the effort.

A research team from Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences has developed and validated a liquid single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chip named “HbGBTS80K,” which includes 80,080 SNPs evenly distributed across 18 chromosomes. This SNP chip effectively distinguished 404 rubber accessions into four groups in population genetic diversity analysis and detected the major gene HbPSK5 in GWAS for the number of laticifer rings. The HbGBTS80K chip is a valuable tool for accelerating functional studies and molecular breeding in rubber trees, addressing the inefficiencies of traditional breeding methods.

The soon-to-rise facilities in Zamboanga Sibugay—which gained reputation as the “Rubber Capital of the Philippines” for its 80,000-hectare rubber production—shall serve as important facets of the DA-PRRI’s research, development, and extension functions as well as the implementation of its initiatives for the Philippine rubber industry.

Their series of studies, conducted across Hainan Island, focused on rubber plantations—a key economic tree species in the region. The results, published in three separate journals, shed light on the complex interplay between parent material, microbes, and soil processes.

In their first study published in Geoderma Regional, the researchers showed how the underlying rock layer, known as parent material, affects the balance of key nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the soil. They found that basaltic soils, formed from volcanic rock, had a higher phosphorus content but lower nitrogen levels than marine sedimentary soils.

With disease and high demand posing threats to the world’s primary natural rubber supply in Southeast Asia, scientists are working to ramp up the U.S. rubber market by advancing methods to extract latex from two sustainable North American plant sources: a dandelion species and a desert shrub.

Researchers reported their methods to improve efficiency and increase latex yield in two recent publications, building upon decades of research led by Katrina Cornish, professor of horticulture and crop science and food, agricultural and biological engineering at The Ohio State University.