Rubber Particles: Size, Molecular Weight and Their Distributions Detected in Wild Hevea Species

Abstract

Rubber cultivation in Malaysia has been extended to large areas all over the country in many decades ago in order to produce high quantity of latex for the rubber industry. The wild Hevea species planted and conserved in Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia (RRIM) are collected from South America especially Amazon basin. These wild Hevea species are considered as the most valuable genetic materials by many rubber plant breeders for achieving further genetic advances in Hevea improvement programmes. Currently, 8 wild Hevea species are being conserved in the germplasm conservation area namely H.benthamiana, H.brasiliensis, H.camargoana, H.guianensis, H.nitida, H.pauciflora, H.rigidifolia and H.spruceana. Generally, studies have been carried out on these wild Hevea species focusing on the dry rubber content, mechanical stability, Wallace plasticity and Mooney viscosity. There are no thoughtful investigations into the rubber particle size, molecular weight and their distributions in these wild Hevea species for utilization in the crop improvement programmes yet. Therefore, this paper attempts to uncover the characteristics of rubber particles in wild Hevea species that never have been explored as potential species in the context of rubber particle size, rubber molecular weight as well as rubber particle size distribution and rubber molecular weight distribution.

Keywords: Rubber particles, Size distribution, Molecular weight, Molecular weight distribution