Rubber

The issues

• Preserving rubber growing, which is vital for millions of smallholders.
• Tackling the challenges of competition with synthetic rubbers and dependence on a limited market.
• Promoting the capacity of plantations to recycle atmospheric carbon.

CIRAD's role

• Increasing the added value of small-scale rubber growing, using planting material suited to growing conditions, appropriate crop management sequences, and territory management.
• Adapting rubber growing to future climate change, particularly abiotic stress.
• Proposing disease control methods, particularly against the fungus Microcyclus ulei.
• Implementing ecological intensification of rubber growing, in other words improving productivity while protecting the environment.
• Determining the qualities of natural rubbers suited to different uses (tyres, industrial rubber, health, aeronautics).