Dandelions as a cash crop

Ryan Carpe
rcarpe@dailyadvocate.com

DARKE COUNTY – As the for­eign mar­ket for nat­ural rub­ber becomes more volatile, sci­en­tists and farm­ers alike are research­ing alter­na­tive sources of the valu­able com­pound.
Tra­di­tion­ally, rub­ber has been pro­duced from the Hevea rub­ber tree (Hevea brasilien­sis), which grows pri­mar­ily in South­east Asia. But the region has grown unsta­ble due to the expan­sion of neigh­bor­ing coun­tries and indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the region, so sci­en­tists are look­ing for eco­nomic rub­ber alter­na­tives.
The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Agri­cul­tural Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter are look­ing to the Cos­sack Dan­de­lion (Tarax­acum kok-saghyz) as the next major rub­ber pro­ducer, and have cre­ated a for­mal­ized con­sor­tium of inter­ested busi­nesses and agri­cul­tural sci­en­tists called the Pro­gram of Excel­lence in Nat­ural Rub­ber Alter­na­tives (PENRA).
The Cos­sack or Russ­ian Dan­de­lion has almost iden­ti­cal qual­i­ties com­pared to nat­ural rub­ber har­vested from the Hevea tree, and in many instances is eas­ier to grow.
While rub­ber is present in our every­day lives, many don’t real­ize its impact on the world.
“Peo­ple don’t real­ize how impor­tant rub­ber is,”PENRA Research Direc­tor Dr. Kat­rina Cor­nish said. “There are 40,000 dif­fer­ent things made with nat­ural rub­ber, and 400 med­ical prod­ucts.”
Rub­ber alter­na­tive research couldn’t be hap­pen­ing at a more vital time, as the demand for the nat­ural resources con­tin­ues to increase while the global sup­ply is unre­li­able.
“We’re far more at risk for not hav­ing rub­ber than not hav­ing enough fuel. If we don’t have any rub­ber here, we have no air­planes and cars will go back to going 30 miles per hour,” Dr. Cor­nish said.
Accord­ing to PENRA, the United States imports 1.2 mil­lion met­ric tons per year, and if the U.S. Does not begin domes­tic pro­duc­tion, the coun­try will be forced to pay extremely high prices for tire rub­ber and/or face global short­ages.
“We really do need to get going on this as quickly, because we are fac­ing such a mas­sive short­fall of nat­ural rub­ber pro­duc­tion.”
And national com­pa­nies are have already rec­og­nized the dan­de­lion as a pri­mary rub­ber alter­na­tive.
In May of this year, the Bridge­stone Cor­po­ra­tion announced that through their research with PENRA, they had deter­mined that Cos­sack dan­de­lions could become a renew­able, com­mer­cially viable source of tire-grade rub­ber. That’s why Dr. Cor­nish and other researchers at OSU are work­ing to com­mer­cial­ize domes­tic sources of nat­ural rub­ber while devel­op­ing processes and mar­kets for dis­tri­b­u­tion.
The Ohio Depart­ment of Devel­op­ment (ODOT) has funded a pilot pro­cess­ing facil­ity in Wooster where they’re able to process large quan­ti­ties of rub­ber from Cos­sack dan­de­lions, and the PENRA is plan­ning to cre­ate a larger full-scale plant in three years.
Dr. Kornish’s research extends from the ger­mo­plasm to the pro­cess­ing of the dan­de­lion itself, which will at some point be used to make both latex and solid rub­ber using dif­fer­ent pro­cess­ing plants. The Cos­sack dan­de­lion also pro­duces inulin (not to be con­fused with insulin) which is a sugar that could be used in non-food appli­ca­tions or processed into bio-ethanol. The major ben­e­fit of using the Cos­sack dan­de­lion as the new source of rub­ber is that it can be grown right here in the United States, includ­ing Ohio.
“It can be grown by any­one in Ohio; the whole state is in its grow­ing region. It can also be grown in Canada,” Doc­tor Cor­nish said. “Basi­cally if you took a hor­i­zon­tal line halfway up the (United States), north of that that line you could grow, and south of that line you can’t. So there’s a lot of grow­ing regions.”
PENRA hopes to intro­duce the Cos­sack dan­de­lion as a main­stream agri­cul­tural crop soon, but the task isn’t with­out its own chal­lenges.
“The main issue with any new plant intro­duc­tion is who’s going to pay for the first crop, because you can’t get a farm loan if you’ve never sold it before,” Dr. Cor­nish said. “So a large scale pro­cess­ing plant will be needed in the next few years, and before that someone’s got to plant the acres.”
PENRA has already setup sev­eral acres in dif­fer­ent parts of the state this fall to see how the crop estab­lishes itself in the dif­fer­ent areas.
And so far, the response from local farm­ers is opti­mistic.
“We’ve talked with some (local farm­ers) and the reac­tion is gen­er­ally very pos­i­tive. I think every­body would love to have another prof­itable crop on their slate of things to grow, and I think this one is going to very prof­itable because demand is there,” Dr. Cor­nish said.
The Cos­sack Dan­de­lion will even­tu­ally be grown as an annual crop, and farm­ers would aim to plant as soon as the frost melts in the spring. PENRA is cur­rently research­ing the best time to pull the plants for the most yield.
The Cos­sack dan­de­lions is grown in rota­tion, and grows in well-drained soil and heavy wet clay. It can also grow on mar­ginal lands that aren’t’ being used for other crops.
PENRA’S goal is to cre­ate and main­tain a full-scale pro­cess­ing plant in three years and have com­pet­i­tive reg­u­lar farm­ing in the region in five years.
So don’t be sur­prised if in a few years you notice the Cos­sack dan­de­lion grow­ing in a field near you.

Ryan Carpe is a staff writer at The Daily Advo­cate in Greenville.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.