LN: Czechs cultivate plant that may replace rubber trees

Prague, May 17 (CTK) - Czech botanists have cultivated a new plant, a hybrid of "kok-saghyz" from Kazakhstan and other Asian dandelions, that can potentially replace dying rubber trees afflicted by mould, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) reports Tuesday.

The new dandelion, cultivated at the Botanical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV), is bigger and has a stronger root than the original kok-saghyz, and consequently it would give more rubber, LN writes.

Czech botanists have thereby taken the first step to avert a worldwide collapse over the lack of rubber, which is necessary in many fields, such as road traffic (tyres), hockey (pucks), medicine (surgical gloves) and birth control (condoms), the paper adds.

Natural rubber is applied to the same extent as the synthetic one. However, the rubber tree plantations in Latin America are threatened with extinction as the para rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) are hit by the Microcyclus ulei fungiform disease that is spreading quickly. It has not yet afflicted the rubber tree plantations in Asia, but the risk is high, LN writes.

This is why an alternative plant to replace the rubber tree should be prepared as a reserve.

The demand for rubber has been rising mainly in the expanding economies of China and India. These countries used to produce rubber, but now they have to import it. The rubber prices are increasing, too, LN notes.

Moreover, the current way of rubber harvesting is dependent on a cheap and available workforce, while computer-controlled machines could be used for the alternative new plant, LN says.

In reaction to the above-mentioned risks, a European project was launched with the participation of the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland as well as the United States.

Czech botanists were invited to the project as they had been mapping the area with a variety of dandelions in Asia for over ten years, team head Jan Kirschner, from the AV's Botanical Institute, told the paper.

Czech botanists were asked to cultivate a new form of dandelion that would grow fast, be sufficiently big, and thus contain a lot of rubber, and reproduce easily.

"It was extremely difficult to cross kok-saghyz with other dandelion species to achieve the required qualities," Kirschner told LN.

Colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands will now be finding out whether the new plant contains enough rubber, he added.

The new dandelion form does not need pollinating for reproduction, it is resistant to drought and soils with a high salt content. This is why it could be grown in south Europe, for instance, on abandoned fields in Spain, the paper says.

Another group of the international team is developing a combine harvester for the new plant that would catch rubber from the roots in a reservoir, while leaves and stalks would be used as fodder, LN writes.

Moreover, in adds, the plants could give inulin, a polysaccharide that can be used in foodstuffs in the form of a fine white sweet low-caloric powder. According to some experts, the new dandelion might be primarily the source of inulin, while rubber would be a by-product.

The first dandelion plantations should appear after 2012 when the European project is to be completed, LN writes.

The paper also reminds of the history of kok-saghyz that botanists first uncovered in Kazakhstan in 1931. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered to grow it en masse as a source of natural rubber.

Before World War Two, Adolf Hitler was interested in it at the time when the Soviet Union supported Nazi Germany with strategic raw materials. The plant was then experimentally grown in Germany and Austria.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Germans tried to grow kok-saghyz in Ukraine but they were not very successful. The Soviet Union then gave the plant's seeds to its allies. Experiments with the plant started to be carried out in the United States.

After the war when rubber export from southeast Asia was revived, kok-saghyz's importance declined and it was almost forgotten after Stalin's death in 1953. Since then kok-saghyz has appeared outside Kazakhstan only in collections of botanical gardens and seed banks, LN recalls.

(Source: http://praguemonitor.com/2011/05/18/ln-czechs-cultivate-plant-may-replace-rubber-trees)