JUNE 2007: AROUND THE STATE, DISPATCHES
CORVALLIS
While soaring gas prices grab all the headlines, few people
realize the price of rubber has nearly quadrupled since 2006.
Delta Plant Technologies hopes to use a combination of local
manpower and some old-fashioned communist ingenuity. During the
1920s, scientists working for Russian leader Joseph Stalin
discovered an unlikely alternative to Brazilian rubber trees:
dandelion roots from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Although crops
of these dandelions were planted all over the U.S. during the
1940s, including Klamath Falls and Corvallis, after World War
II the crops were destroyed. Now the idea of producing rubber
from a crop that grows so quickly is taking seed again.
“We’ve selected plants that produce 20% rubber by
weight,” says Daryl Ehrensing, an Oregon State University
senior faculty research assistant who has been out in the field
studying this unique crop. While tire industry heavyweights
such as Cooper Tires, Goodyear and Firestone look on, Ehrensing
says, Delta Plant Technologies, based in Ohio, hopes to produce
the first batch of Russian dandelion rubber tires in 2010.
Ehrensing is confident a new industry will spring up around
this new type of rubber. “They’re
dandelions,” he says. “They’ll grow
anywhere.”
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