Guayule Blog

A new book out this month (June 2009) details America’s quest to find a viable source of domestic rubber and sever dependence on foreign suppliers.

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.

The American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Rubber Division is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Yulex Corporation celebrated this centennial milestone with a presentation by Yulex Senior Vice President of Research and Development Dr. Katrina Cornish at the Rubber Division’s Technical Meeting in Akron, Ohio this week.

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

Last year, 437 million condoms were sold in the United States alone. Yes, it’s true; condoms are a very popular birth control option preferred by both men and women. Currently, a majority of condoms are manufactured in Southeast Asia and imported into the US. However, that could soon change thanks to Yulex. With the help of guayule natural rubber, Yulex plans to partner with a manufacturer to produce safe, natural condoms made from an American product. Additionally, this could help to minimize that factory-to-market journey.

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.