With trade from Southeast Asia cut off and rubber essential to the U.S. war effort, the guayule rubber produced in Salinas became a national security issue overnight.

A key difference between guayule then and now was that in the 1940s, the guayule cultivated could only be harvested for its rubber after seven years of growth. Today, 12 to 20 months is all that’s needed for the guayule that Yulex Corporation and its partners cultivate to mature, and it’s harvested once per year with far more rubber latex produced from each plant! (To learn more about guayule’s history, visit the Guayule Timeline at Yulex.com)

It was also around World War II that U.S. scientists discovered how to make synthetic rubber from petroleum-based materials, and once the war ended, the U.S. focused on synthetic rubber and latex as the primary alternative to natural, imported sources. As Jim Albanese writes in his ‘Wayback Machine’ column in The Salinas Californian:

“In 1945, the last year of the war, 1,628 acres of guayule were harvested in the Salinas Valley. An additional 7,429 acres were planted but never harvested. Those plants were subsequently destroyed.

If only we’d had a little more faith and patience with guayule. Today, the humble plant is a godsend to medical professionals and patients, offering its juices to provide nonallergenic gloves and other equipment.”

Too true, Jim, but it’s not just medical patients and latex allergy sufferers who have embraced guayule today. It has also been discovered by the manufacturers of everyday consumer products. Specifically, they’ve discovered its benefits as a safe, renewable material over synthetic petroleum-based materials.

And from that perspective, at least one thing hasn’t changed: guayule is still being used to save the planet.

Meetings are scheduled for September 12, 15, and 23 from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the University of Arizona’s Maricopa Agricultural Center located at 37860 W. Smith Enke Rd., Maricopa, Ariz.

Guayule is grown across Arizona and used to produce Yulex^® rubber and latex emulsions.

Growers can expect to learn about the agricultural best practices and crop science that Yulex has developed to cultivate high latex yields from this new industrial crop.

Yulex supplies its material to manufacturers of medical, consumer and industrial products eager to replace petroleum-based synthetic rubber and latex materials as well as imported natural materials from Southeast Asia.

The meetings are free and open to the public with lunch provided. Seating is limited. To reserve a space, growers are encouraged to contact Jan Davis at jdavis@yulex.com or 520.381.2112.

Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security, by Mark R. Finlay, plots out intersecting networks of actors including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, prominent botanists, interned Japanese Americans, Haitian peasants, and ordinary citizens—all of whom contributed to this search for economic self-sufficiency. Challenging once-familiar boundaries between agriculture and industry and field and laboratory, Finlay also identifies an era in which perceived divisions between natural and synthetic came under review. Although synthetic rubber emerged from World War II as one solution, the issue of ever-diminishing natural resources and the question of how to meet consumer, military, and business demands lingers today.

For more information on the book, click here.

According to Dr. Cornish, the next hundred years of rubber history belong to guayule! “With a history that spans Model-T tires to today’s high-performance Type I Latex Allergy safe products, guayule has both a long history and an exciting, diverse future,” said Dr. Cornish

Dr. Cornish’s presentation, entitled A Century of History has Created a Sustainable Economic Reality: The Next Hundred Years of Rubber Belong to Guayule will be available soon. For more information on the ACS’s Rubber Division, visit www.rubber.org.

To familiarize yourself with the history of guayule, see the Guayule Timeline.

Dr. Katrina Cornish, Yulex Corporation

See the March 2009 article from Slate.com, What’s the Greenest Form of Birth Control to learn more.

One medical product made from Yulex® Natural Rubber, examination gloves from Yulex Corp., already has 510(k) FDA approval but there’s another product expected to receive the same approval later this year. TechDevice Corp., makers of a new guayule natural rubber balloon catheter, plan to file their submission with the FDA during the second quarter of 2009 and approval is expected soon thereafter.

According to TechDevice, guayule is a natural choice with its improved physical, chemical and biological properties over high-end synthetic materials often used in balloon catheters. It’s also more effective with better tensile strength than enzyme-treated tropical natural rubber latex. Extensive testing data from the Yulex 510(k) application for exam gloves also will help as TechDevice moves forward with its submission to the FDA.

Though TechDevice initially will use Yulex Natural Rubber for the development and manufacturing of three balloon catheters, the company believes that catheter balloons are only the first part of numerous possibilities for devices incorporating guayule.

Guayule is already a commercial source for high performance, safe natural rubber, but researchers from the USDA ARS, Yulex Corporation and Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. are exploring the use of guayule as an economical and environmentally friendly energy source. Researchers have found that energy can be made from ground-up guayule stems and branches, called “bagasse,” that are left after the latex has been removed. Guayule bagasse would provide about the same amount of energy as charcoal.

Researchers are exploring use of the bagasse as a source of ethanol, bio-oil, and synthetic gas, or syn-gas. With a pretreatment, guayule bagasse can be readily fermented into ethanol. Additionally, researchers have found that the contents of guayule bagasse can be burned to generate electricity, made into value-added products or converted into bio-oil.

A few benefits of guayule as an energy source:

-      Cost: The cost of getting to the bagasse as a starting point has already been borne by the latex-extraction.

-      Competition: Guayule isn’t a food or feed crop so it’s doesn’t compete with those uses.

-      Clean and Green: the latex extraction process uses water, not harsh solvents.

To learn more, see the recent USDA Agricultural Research Service article, Go Native With This Promising Biofuel—and Biomedical—Crop.

See a new report, Protect Yourself from Latex Allergy, from Ivanhoe Broadcast News for more information.