Latest / Conservation Stories / Guayule: West Texas’ Rubber Plant

Transcript

Guayule: West Texas’ Rubber Plant · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:08
  Speaker B: And welcome back to Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research Association. And I am excited today to have Kathryn Simpson with us. She's an associate professor of urban horticulture and sustainability. Which is very surprising to me that that's your. I don't know why, except that. Because the reason I reached out to you is because I heard a little birdie say that we were working, somebody was studying while you lay.
• 0:37
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 0:38
  Speaker B: In that. Am I saying it right?
• 0:39
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 0:39
  Speaker B: Okay, so spell it for us.
• 0:41
  Speaker A: It's G, U, A, Y, U, L, E. Okay.
• 0:45
  Speaker B: So I. I am a weirdo and like, heard about this that was growing in Arizona. Was like, why aren't we growing this here? And so when someone told me, I was like, because this was several years ago.
• 1:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we actually did grow it here for a while. There was some research going on. Dr. Foster and Cofelt. Okay. They were doing some. I think it was. I can't remember the town, but it was in this general area.
• 1:21
  Speaker B: I knew there was something like it halfway or something like that.
• 1:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:25
  Speaker B: So tell us a little bit about.
• 1:27
  Speaker A: About.
• 1:27
  Speaker B: About Catherine. Tell us where you came from and how'd you get into this gig.
• 1:33
  Speaker A: Well, I'm from Louisiana. I grew up on a kind of. I guess now it'd be considered kind of a micro farm. We had a few acres and we would farm it and then moved to another town when I was younger and decided I missed plants. When I went to college and I started out as a business major, decided that was not what I wanted to do and moved to Texas and got a degree in environmental soil science and then another degree in plant and soil science. And then I went to AM and got my PhD in horticulture.
• 2:10
  Speaker B: Okay, so where'd you get your two, your undergrad and your master's?
• 2:14
  Speaker A: Texas A and M University. Kingsville.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: In Kingsville.
• 2:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker B: Well, you are the second interviewee that I have interviewed today that is a graduate of Kingsville.
• 2:25
  Speaker A: Oh, nice.
• 2:25
  Speaker B: How about that?
• 2:27
  Speaker A: Who else? I don't know.
• 2:29
  Speaker B: So he's in the A M AgriLife system.
• 2:31
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a small world. We're close knit.
• 2:37
  Speaker B: That's awesome. We also gotten connected with the kc, I think A and M Kingsville. It's the wildlife research that's here.
• 2:49
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Cesar Claiberg. That's it.
• 2:51
  Speaker B: Thank you very much. C.K. clayburg. That's right. Yeah. So we recently were at the Emerald Farm show and they came and shared.
• 2:58
  Speaker A: A booth with us.
• 2:59
  Speaker B: It was a lot of Fun.
• 3:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, they've got an amazing program. They're one of the best wildlife programs out there, in my opinion. Anyway, they. They do a lot and it's very hands on.
• 3:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. So they put out this great magazine and I read through there and like, so they're going to start. We're going to start having them on the podcast to talk about what all they're doing. So it's really fun.
• 3:18
  Speaker A: They're doing some cool stuff.
• 3:19
  Speaker B: They really are. So how did a horticulturist get interested in guayule? Because why you lay is like, when I think of it, I think of it more as what they're growing for alternatives for rubber.
• 3:34
  Speaker A: It is. Yeah, it is an alternative rubber and latex crop. And if you think about it this way, a lot of the crops that we have out there are agronomic crops and those are generally the staple crops and things like that, that. Cotton for fiber, wheat, corn, all of those. But a lot of the specialty crops are horticultural crops and they don't necessarily fit into other categories.
• 4:02
  Speaker B: This is so true. I've not thought about this because it. And, and, and true. Like, I know when for a while there was a canna farm in this area, so they grew the bulbs for the canna flowers, you know, and so that, that's.
• 4:16
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 4:16
  Speaker B: I just hadn't thought about that. But yeah, they would fit. More specialty crops would fit under.
• 4:21
  Speaker A: But.
• 4:22
  Speaker B: So are you at the Davis College then?
• 4:23
  Speaker A: Yes. Still. Yeah.
• 4:24
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 4:25
  Speaker A: All right. I'm in the plant and Soil science department.
• 4:27
  Speaker B: Okay, so tell us about this plant. Tell me everything about this plant.
• 4:34
  Speaker A: Well, Mayula is Parthenium argentatum and it is a native to. It is actually native to the Chihuahuan desert of Texas, Mexico, New Mexico, and it can even go. I think the westernmost line is in California. So it is an alternative latex and rubber crop. It was first, I'm gonna say discovered and publicized widely in the 1800s because the native, I guess tribal communities in Mexico had discovered. And then they used it and they had their own uses for it before then, but to the wider world it had not really been discovered yet. And so in the. I can't remember the exact date, but in the mid to late 1800s it was discovered again, quote, unquote. And it started being commercialized a little bit. And these were native stands in Mexico and the US Had a partnership with Mexico and they cut them down and they shipped them and they had some companies for that.
• 6:01
  Speaker B: So what were they doing with them back then? What were they?
• 6:04
  Speaker A: Rubber. They were extracting rubber.
• 6:06
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 6:07
  Speaker A: And I think in the 1920s or something close to that, they had depleted most of the native stands and so they tried to do more cultivation. And Waile has had ups and downs throughout the past century or so, and it has found its highs whenever we have rubber insecurity. And so times of war, times of when the Hevea rubber trees have declined due to leaf blights or whatever else, those were times where they started exploring rubber more. So I think it was World War I and maybe again in World War II they had, they had a few incidents where they started putting more into the research and understanding that and they'd get off the ground a little bit. And it's just that it has some issues that makes it make it difficult to widely cultivate. And plus Hevea is so much cheaper. And I wondered about that. And it's also, you know, we've, we've met our demands worldwide with the Hevea rubber that's being cultivated right now. But we more recently, especially during COVID have not. So there have been worldwide shortages. Okay. And so with, you know, the increased demand and with other things like, you know, if the cultivation is, the acreage is reduced or anything like that, then there's. And you can't really grow Hevea everywhere. We can't grow it in the US they tried in Hawaii, it didn't work. And yeah, Brazil I think has some, um, but I think it stopped growing there a lot or commonly because of the leaf blights. And then now it's mainly in South Asia.
• 8:19
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 8:20
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 8:21
  Speaker B: And so I would, from, from what I remember, which was a long time ago, it was. I've slept since then. It is, I mean, it, it hadn't been really. This isn't like a region necessarily where you would think it would grow because it gets too cold. Right. I mean, it just, it doesn't live through. This is the unscientific term, the winter. It doesn't live through the winter, Is that correct?
• 8:47
  Speaker A: With the Waile, there are a lot of different lines from the previous cultivation and domestication attempts. And so some have more cold tolerance than others. And there are some lines out there that do, do tolerate cold a little bit better than others, but it will go more into dormancy. And the cool thing or kind of interesting thing about Wiley is it has to overwinter in order to accumulate rubber.
• 9:16
  Speaker B: Well, that's interesting. Okay. So what I remember is reading something on the Agri Life website about like, I think it was just a peer reviewed paper or Something, and I'm pretty sure it was at the halfway station and that they had either identified a variety or had bred a variety that would work here.
• 9:43
  Speaker A: Yes. And those are probably some of the AZ lines. I read the paper too, and if it's the one that I'm thinking about, I think, if I'm remembering correctly, AZ3 or 4 did better. And there's six AZ lines that were originally bred in Arizona. So, okay. University of Arizona had a huge project where they worked with Wyoli and they, they did a lot of work and that was the SBAR project. And so they have a lot of the information and things like that. They worked, I believe, with Bridgestone. Yes. And Bridgestone is still continuing some of that research.
• 10:27
  Speaker B: I thought so. I mean, it's been a couple years since I've looked, but the last time I looked, it was like they were still interested.
• 10:36
  Speaker A: Yes. I do think that they recently shut down or suspended operations in their extraction plant. I'm not 100% certain because that was kind of like one of those things you just kind of see in passing and you're like, I need to investigate that later.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: Right, right. Other stuff.
• 10:54
  Speaker A: But the, the main thing is they're still doing the research. They're. They've got several sites. They've got one here with Dr. I think. Dr. And they've also got.
• 11:08
  Speaker B: And I did not even.
• 11:09
  Speaker A: Okay, yeah. And they've got some in, I think, the Winter Garden area.
• 11:19
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 11:19
  Speaker A: And El Paso. I know that they tried to grow it in the Lower Rio Grande Valley at one point. I know they've got several stands in New Mexico and, of course, Arizona.
• 11:33
  Speaker B: So are they being grown by. Is it being contracted by farmers or are these just like research plots?
• 11:40
  Speaker A: I think that from my understanding now, I don't know everything, but I think, think that they are contracting research plots, some with farmers and then some with extension.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: Okay, gotcha.
• 11:54
  Speaker A: So I think that with. I think it just depends on what resources they have and who they contact.
• 12:04
  Speaker B: So you're. Let's just say, like, I'm imagining how you found out about this. You're sitting at your desk and you're thinking, what is a weird plant?
• 12:13
  Speaker A: What in the world?
• 12:14
  Speaker B: I mean, I just know. I was like, surely we can grow other things. What else can we grow here? You know, that's how I came across it. So I want to know how you came across this.
• 12:25
  Speaker A: Actually, I had no previous knowledge or experience with it. And when I first started at Texas Tech, I had been contacted by a colleague in engineering and they introduced me to Dr. Katrina Cornish and she's at USDA now, but she was at Ohio State and she is the expert person that has been dealing with Waile and Rubber Dandelion and all of the other alternative latex and rubber producing plants for a long time.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: Dr. Dautre talked some about that. I'd never heard of a rubber dandelion.
• 13:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, we're doing a little bit of that as well. So, so is some of the thinking.
• 13:14
  Speaker B: That as the push for, you know, bringing more manufacturing back to the United States that some of this will kind of take, I don't know, root. That it will be a crop that like, that's a viable alternative for people to grow now? It's a, it's something that would be more along the lines of like say, great production where you're going to put that in the ground and, and you don't replant it year after year.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a perennial.
• 13:50
  Speaker B: It's a perennial crop.
• 13:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, cotton is too.
• 13:53
  Speaker B: We just kill it.
• 13:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:57
  Speaker A: Well, I think that the, the thought is that we can't compete with the prices with Asia.
• 14:05
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:05
  Speaker A: And we're not going to be able to produce the volume that they can give, however we can supplement. But our strategy in tardis, which is the grant that I'm with the Engineering Research center, what does that stand for? Oh, I can't think of it right now, but there's rubber and other things in there. And the, the thought is if we approach it differently and look at latex instead of rubber, because latex is a higher profit margin, some people are allergic to it. And that's what's cool about Waile is that it doesn't contain the proteins that cause most of the allergic reactions. So it's currently hypoallergenic because people have not developed the reaction to it.
• 15:02
  Speaker B: Okay. So the medical. A lot of. Maybe looking at more even medical uses.
• 15:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because actually higher value. Yeah. Because a lot of the synthetic latex and synthetic rubbers out there do not have the same properties like strength or flexibility or if you're talking about gloves that touches and things like that, that natural rubber does. So you can't replace it like airplane tires. You can't replace natural rubber. It has to be natural rubber because of the properties that it contains Synthetic rubber and latex do not have those properties. Okay. And Guayuli does. Yes. It has. Actually performs better in some ways than.
• 15:47
  Speaker B: Others because it's legit rubber.
• 15:49
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 15:49
  Speaker B: It's not, it's not an alternative to rubber. It is actually producing rubber.
• 15:56
  Speaker A: Yes. And especially with medical applications, synthetic rubber tends to be a little harder. And like, if I think one of the patents that Dr. Cornish has or she's on has a trach tube where it is the. Why you le. Or rubber dandelion latex. Where. Or no rubber rather. And it's softer, so it doesn't cause some of the issues that the synthetic do. That's so interesting.
• 16:29
  Speaker B: I'm trying to, like, imagine. What are you growing this year? Dandelions. Okay. But like, okay, if it's.
• 16:38
  Speaker A: If it.
• 16:38
  Speaker B: I know we're talking about while you leave, but I'm going off on the dandelion thing. Where is the rubber? Is it in the leaf?
• 16:47
  Speaker A: The roots.
• 16:48
  Speaker B: It's in the roots, yes. So you, I feel like, might have to have a lot of dandelions.
• 16:57
  Speaker A: Yes. The seeding rate is really high.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: And then how is it harvested? How to, like, what does that look like?
• 17:06
  Speaker A: Peanuts.
• 17:06
  Speaker B: We're gonna go under and flip it up.
• 17:07
  Speaker A: And that's what we're. One of the things that we're trying to figure out because we've got some ideas that we're going to be testing. But right now it's been hand harvesting for everything. Because the plots are so small, we're still trying to refine the populations. Okay. To where we can get higher rubber content. So are you doing.
• 17:26
  Speaker B: Are you doing dandelions and guayule or are you just doing.
• 17:29
  Speaker A: While you lay? We're going to be doing both. Right now, we only have in the ground why you lay. And in my greenhouse, we have some aeroponic dandelions.
• 17:39
  Speaker B: Okay. So the way you lay, it looks like a cactus. Kind of. Kind of.
• 17:47
  Speaker A: It looks like a scraggly shrub. And it's supposed to look like that. I've had to have that conversation with my students and other people. It's like, yes, it looks bad, but it's supposed to. So in the.
• 18:01
  Speaker B: The rubber is in. In the roots of it also, or is it somewhere else?
• 18:05
  Speaker A: It is in the parenchyma. So the. The bark of the. Like the. The vascular cambium surrounding the core of the stem. So basically we're harvesting the stems and then we're debarking it and then we're extracting the. Yeah, it's like hemp. Yeah. So the fiber is.
• 18:27
  Speaker B: You take off this lining and then there's a fiber around a core.
• 18:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Speaker B: So it's a lot easier than hemp.
• 18:36
  Speaker A: Probably.
• 18:36
  Speaker B: It is. Hemp is. I'm. I'm like, convinced that it's the Cotton gin that like the reason people quit doing hemp because there's no great way to. I mean it's a booger.
• 18:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's another thing is we have an extraction and we have a processing process. Yes. But it's still not as efficient like the latex extraction that is aqueous. So we can extract that in like not hexane, you know, not the really bad solvents. But with the rubber, the extraction process is very solvent heavy. And so we've been trying to develop other extraction processes and I can't tell you much about those, but other people have could go into way more detail on that.
• 19:33
  Speaker B: I'm going to just on a wild guess, think it might be it has something to do with microbes. Maybe it might would be my guess just because I know that that's like with, with hemp it has to basically has to rot on the ground. And it's the microbial life that loosens up the lignin on it, which I'm. They're different plants, so I'm sure it's a different thing. But I feel like there's a microbe that will eat everything. And people love microbes. They're all about them these days.
• 20:05
  Speaker A: I don't really, I can't say one way or another right now, but for the most part what I'm aware of, they have been trying more solvent or like less harsh solvent based extraction methods and it's more mechanical than it is.
• 20:20
  Speaker B: Okay, so this is why this is an engineering you're crossing. So is it, is this an ag engineering thing? Like we have an ag engineering section for that kind of research at Tech. Do you have a division of ag?
• 20:33
  Speaker A: No, we don't have an ag engineering department or. But I, I don't know if they used to. I, I want to say at one point they did, but it probably got absorbed. But I could be thinking about someone else or like another university. But it is technically a lot of the engineering principles, but we cross that all the time. And like horticulture especially, I do a lot of controlled environment research as well. And we engineer our own equipment. We have built, my students mainly have built a lot of aeroponic chambers. We've built so much stuff on our own because it's not really commercially available or it's unaffordable. And so technically the thrust that I lead in the engineering research center is called crop engineering. And so we are basically engineering the system. We are driving the engine of the grant where we're producing the crops, we're Understanding them. We're looking at the mechanisms of their performance in order to make them perform like that well tuned engine to where we can have reliable. Because right now, if you planted waile seeds in the field, your germination isn't going to be consistent. If you look at cotton being planted, it is very consistent. You're going to get the.
• 22:08
  Speaker B: We have a hundred years of doing what you're doing right now for wailea.
• 22:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 22:13
  Speaker B: I mean that's. This is. That's probably a little further along by the time they got here, cotton got here. But it's really the same idea. And what a. There's no better place my opinion in the world to be doing this research because we've already done this once for cotton. So it's the. The playbook's been written.
• 22:33
  Speaker A: Yes. And different plants perform differently, but the structure is there.
• 22:38
  Speaker B: Right.
• 22:39
  Speaker A: We do need to work on infrastructure. I'm a very, you know, staunch supporter of infrastructure first. Because if we start doing things without thinking about the end product, then we're going to be stalling. And that has to develop at the same time as the crop production part. Because a lot of times, you know, when else do you get the opportunity to advance the technology alongside advancing the crop?
• 23:09
  Speaker B: I feel like I'm in a time warp because this is exactly what I mean. This is the same conversations we've had in hemp. Now you have a big advantage over hemp in that you cannot smoke it and get high. So you will have left out an entire group of people.
• 23:27
  Speaker A: That would give.
• 23:28
  Speaker B: You a big headache.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: Yes, the regulations on this are a lot different.
• 23:35
  Speaker B: You will not have people that are supporters, advocates, you know, but it's the same idea, you know, now, you know, we kept saying, like, we really need to, like we need a seed. Hello, we need a seed. But we need also to talk to these people here at the end. So we would say we don't need a supply chain, we need a loop. Because the beginning needs to talk to the end.
• 24:02
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
• 24:03
  Speaker B: And we need to know part of what the issue that we had with hemp, it was like, what quality do you need? There's no standard set. And you know, so like there's been ASTM work that I've done. Like that's like, how. What kind of what can we. What equipment is out there that we don't have to recreate something to tell us, you know, like the strength and all of these things that you want for a fiber, you know, and so none of that is there, you know, and. But The. The industrial. The end buyer of. Of, I think hemp. I think you guys just have such an easier lift than. Than hemp does.
• 24:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. And especially because there's, I'm going to say, competing crop with Hevea. And a lot of the standards have already been set there. And there's a huge infrastructure for polymer research. So polymer engineering is its own field. And there's a rubber division of the American Chemical Society. And so there's a lot of standards that we don't have to plug into.
• 25:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That it's. That's just so fascinating. I don't know. I. I love. And I love the idea of, like, what. What is the infrastructure we need? And to me, I'm like, Lubbock's a great place, too, because we have this huge research, medical research right here down the road. And if you're looking at something that is going to go into the medical field, this is like, perfect place to do all this.
• 25:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it has conditions that are conducive to the production. And we actually, some of the people that I work with, my colleagues on this project, have created a suitability map not only for Waile, but also for Dandelion. And. And so it shows the regions based on the environmental conditions, like soil and temperatures and things like that, where we can actually grow a. And we're right smack in the middle of it.
• 26:13
  Speaker B: And it's a desert crop. It's been grown in the Chihuahua desert.
• 26:16
  Speaker A: And uses less water.
• 26:18
  Speaker B: Do you know, do y' all have an anticipated amount of, like, how much water it needs?
• 26:23
  Speaker A: They've done the research in Arizona, but the conditions are so deep different that. And they were growing it for rubber and not latex. For latex, you need a little bit more because it has to stay hydrated. Because Katrina always uses the analogy of cream and butter. And whenever it's latex, it's in that liquid state. You know, if you've got cream, it's all suspended particles and everything like that. It's not yet butter, but. But once it goes to butter, you can't go back. And so once it goes to rubber, it can't be resuspended into latex.
• 27:00
  Speaker B: No microwave for that, huh?
• 27:01
  Speaker A: No. So. It's very nuanced in what we want to do. And so it's a little bit different from the SBAR project in Arizona and the cultivation that's already been established because the systems are so different. They use flood irrigation, we use drip. We have different water qualities, we have different water sources, and we have different Regulations and things like that.
• 27:32
  Speaker B: So interesting. So, yes, really, you guys are. This is exactly what I kept saying. This is what needs to happen with hemp. You need this whole look at it and. But what you always had in that industry is that there were parts and pieces that people had an interest in and no one that was really involved understood agriculture. So often it was just people that it was just a cool thing to. To study. You know what I mean? And so you never really had a lot of just real ag. Looking at the entire value chain.
• 28:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. And if I'm not going to get started in cannabis and hemp, because I have my own opinions on. A lot of things are done. But. And I think it's a great product and a great crop to work with.
• 28:23
  Speaker B: It could be.
• 28:24
  Speaker A: It's got potential.
• 28:26
  Speaker B: Yes. Yes. I'm so. No, just to say I'm. I'm on. I serve on the. We started a Texas Hemp growers association here and now with the. Our goal was to eventually find the people across the US to convert and let that be us thing. And we did that this last year or this year. And so I. But I still have in my closet, I hate hemp T shirt because there are many days that I want to wear it. I cannot tell you how many people that have been like, I have this something I want to meet with you. And you're like, you turn on a meeting and you're like, I can basically smell marijuana through the Google screen here.
• 29:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:02
  Speaker B: What a mess.
• 29:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that a lot of it wasn't driven by agriculturalists and.
• 29:09
  Speaker B: Oh, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's exactly right. Yeah.
• 29:13
  Speaker A: I've got a lot of students that have gone and worked in those industries and then come back because of the way it's run.
• 29:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, it is. That's what I was saying that you guys just don't. You're not going to have those type of people. I mean, you always. When there's a new industry, you know, people would be like, hey, this is. It's just always this way when there's a new industry. And I see that sometimes I see it like in biochar and things like that, but the, the depth of it in hemp was unbelievable.
• 29:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, I can. I can see that happening. So.
• 29:47
  Speaker B: But it just is so funny to hear like you repeat the things like that I said, you know, and. And so always sometimes I'll call myself the most hated person in hemp.
• 30:00
  Speaker A: Sometimes people need to understand. And I'm sure you're not the only voice that it feels that way because there's a reason I didn't get into hemp and I still refuse to until some of the red tape goes away because it was just made worse a.
• 30:23
  Speaker B: Couple of weeks ago.
• 30:24
  Speaker A: Oh yeah.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: So I'm. Yeah, it's a. Anyway, but we're not here to talk about hamp, which is not as positive thing although some good things came out of it for, for our area. And I have a friend who's still here in the area working and has done some great development of technology and stuff. So that is very different from anything that's ever been done. So that's pretty exciting to see. You know that, that, that innovation has come out of our region based on what, what we knew could happen, you know, and should happen for it is that it needs to be treated as an industrial crop. So. So do you anticipate having acreage of dandelions as well out outdoor? You're just trying to.
• 31:13
  Speaker A: We're. Right now we're establishing seed stock. So in Ohio they're establishing a lot of seed stock. We're envisioning this, what we have already stockpiled and everything as more of a winter ish or late season crop because it's a five month cycle. But it also requires cooler conditions. So it could be crop rotation, type situation, cover crop.
• 31:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker A: And it's, it's actually really cool how it works and everything. But it is more focused on rubber. It produces more rubber than latex and we're still not quite at the percentage of rubber production that we would like it to be. But I think the population that they're, the breeding population is India and Kilo. So they're you know, ABC India, Kilo Hotel, you know, the those. So they've advanced, they've got more selection that's been going on this year and we're trying to select for the properties and the, you know, the agricultural production factors that we want. And we know that soil has a big impact impact on it and you need taproot development and think about it like carrots. If you've got too compacted of a soil, you'll have the forking of the carrot and you don't want that.
• 32:57
  Speaker B: That's really interesting. I was having a conversation with somebody just the other day about deep breaking and they were theorizing like would be interesting to see how much, how much work have we done in compaction. Like what does that look like?
• 33:11
  Speaker A: Well, I mean I'm a big advocate for organic matter and with.
• 33:15
  Speaker B: I am too. But you know it's sand around here.
• 33:18
  Speaker A: I know. And everything. Just because of the temperatures, it breaks down so fast. So I think that it's going to be a lot of site selection. I do think the sand will be a lot better than say a clay or something like that. For the dandelions. They aren't weedy. I, I need to verify this, but a lot of what I've heard is that they're not going to self seed. And like, that's what I was wondering too.
• 33:51
  Speaker B: I was like, I can just see this. Be like.
• 33:54
  Speaker A: No. And I've seen the fields that they have and there's no volunteers coming out.
• 34:04
  Speaker B: Go out there and pick it up and go.
• 34:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's. But we have collected. See, we needed the seeds, so we collected seed.
• 34:11
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 34:13
  Speaker A: But there's. It's not the same species as the one that's out in your yard giving you problems.
• 34:20
  Speaker B: So with the guayule, does it have. Is it a leafy branch? Does it have like leaves on it? Because I'm just thinking like, is there potential for grazing? Have y'.
• 34:36
  Speaker A: All. Have y'. All. Is it.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Is it. Would it be a forage well. Or would it harm the production of.
• 34:44
  Speaker A: I think it could be one of those crops that was less managed, but I don't think it would be a good forage candidate just because of the compounds. They're very bitter.
• 34:56
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Very desperate starved cow. Yeah.
• 35:00
  Speaker A: Some of it's actually the oils in some of the leaves and things have been. The terpenes have been examined for pesticide efficacy, like as an insecticide. And it is a. It's shown that it has the potential for that. And so. Yeah, and so. And it. I know that they built or they created some of the like siding planks with the bagasse and other wood products and put that in there and it helped with like termite resistance. Yeah. So it's got compounds in there that make it resistant to pests because it's very bitter. And dandelion, the rubber dandelion as well, if you eat it, it has a bitter aftertaste. Okay. So it depends on how much you like bitter leaves. But, but the. I don't think it would be a good grazing crop, especially because if they're starting to take the branches as well, then that's part of your profit.
• 36:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's what I wondered if it'd be like also a lot of times if they eat like you put goats in there, they would eat all. They, they probably eat it to the ground because there's nothing they would need. I don't think. But they probably love rubber.
• 36:24
  Speaker A: Probably.
• 36:26
  Speaker B: But I was feeling like they pull all of the leaves and stuff off of it anyway. But I'm always.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. I. I think if I had to choose between one to be kind of like a forage, probably dandelion might be more palatable. I don't think that just because of the resins and other things. I don't think it would. Would be.
• 36:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:48
  Speaker A: Very delicious for.
• 36:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:50
  Speaker A: Unless. Unless something was really desperate. You never know.
• 36:56
  Speaker B: You never know around here. It does get pretty dry. So is it still. Can you still find it out in. Yes, you can, in fact, for. Because I was just thinking about in the Davis Mountains. We were there not long ago in the Davis Mountains in. In Big Ben. And I remember seeing a sign that said that that was identifying it. I remember that it's been a while. So it is still out there to some degree, I guess.
• 37:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I was reading a paper the other day that said that I think it was Foster and Coffelt. I think they had gone out and a few scientists a couple decades ago, I believe, went out and tried to find the original stands that they had harvested and they weren't still there. So it may have been a shifting of environment. But I do believe that you could find some. I know in Mexico there are native stands and we've got an agreement and we're able to go and collaborate with them to see if there are stands in the original native area that we could select from.
• 38:11
  Speaker B: So you're the grant that you do. You have the grant. Okay. And it is in collaboration with. Is Ohio involved in. Who all is involved in this work?
• 38:22
  Speaker A: We've got several core institutions. The Ohio State University is the core. This lead institution and Texas Tech as well as Caltech and UC Merced and North Carolina State University, Case Western and another one that I can see in my head, but I can't.
• 38:50
  Speaker B: That's a big group of universities collaborating.
• 38:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. We've got a lot going on and there's a lot of moving parts, I bet. Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker B: That's really interesting though. And everybody. Are all of those. Those universities that are working on this, are they all regions or. It could be grown because it seems like. No, no, that's what I was thinking.
• 39:12
  Speaker A: I was like, can you.
• 39:12
  Speaker B: Can you really grow this in Ohio?
• 39:14
  Speaker A: Well, yeah. Ohio is mainly focused on growing the Dandelions because they can't grow the Wiley there. UC Merced and Texas Tech are focused on waile, but we're also going to be focused Experimenting with the Dandelion us more than you seem or said, because that's a little out of the range. They're a little too hot. And the other institutions don't have an agricultural person on the team, so they're focused more on the engineering, either with the thrustone, which is more in the understanding the mechanisms of rubber and latex production, or the thrust 3, that is more in the polymer science, like developing products and understanding the polymers themselves. Okay.
• 40:01
  Speaker B: So is tech doing it? I know we have the Biopolymer Fiber and Biopolymer center. Is FBRI involved in any way?
• 40:08
  Speaker A: I've been working with some people over there. We're trying to develop another grant to help build kind of a model or experimental extraction facility and work with some of the polymers that we're producing in the bagasse and things like that to develop others. Dr. Kala Rajan, she is interested in some of the polymers that we have because she works with packaging and so that might be something really cool that could come of it. Or even using a combination of some of the cotton byproducts and some of the waile.
• 40:45
  Speaker B: Wow, that's so interesting. Well, I hope that that comes about and if anybody is a forward thinking venture capitalist, this would be a good place to invest some money.
• 40:59
  Speaker A: Yes. And we've actually got a pitch competition. It's restricted to the universities, but if we're, if we do have collaborations with industry, so if somebody is interested in, as an industry representative or company person that would like to be involved, we have opportunities to be, to provide information or products or materials or things like that through TARDIS itself. And we have a pitch competition that the IHUB is. Oh yes, me too. And they're great. And they're helping us do a Piranha Pit, which is like shark T. Oh my gosh.
• 41:43
  Speaker B: But okay, so when is, when is that going to be held? Do we know? Do we have a date?
• 41:49
  Speaker A: The date for applications is in February.
• 41:51
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 41:52
  Speaker A: Early February. It's. The website is live. I think you can find it on the IHUB website. Okay. But if you look for TARDIS with two S's because don't want to violate that copyright. And, and so that should be available and you can look at the, the applications you. To submit to the Piranha Pit competition, you do have to be part of the university at some capacity. We're trying to lift up the junior faculty and students, but there are opportunities. So if you're interested, just get in touch and we'll, we'll let you know at what capacity.
• 42:32
  Speaker B: Right.
• 42:32
  Speaker A: You can be involved.
• 42:33
  Speaker B: Oh, that would be a lot of fun. Maybe we. As you get closer, we can. We can do another conversation and get Taisha up here and. Oh, yeah, talk about what. What all she is.
• 42:44
  Speaker A: She's.
• 42:44
  Speaker B: She's been on before, so we can have her on. Talk about what she's up to and getting ready for that. That would be great.
• 42:51
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, she's great. And she's like. All the events they put on have been amazing.
• 42:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, they really are. Well, thank you again.
• 42:59
  Speaker A: Thank you.
• 43:00
  Speaker B: I really appreciate it. And I'm just so excited that somebody's doing this research and it's right here in our backyard.
• 43:08
  Speaker A: I'm excited, too. I really like it, and I think it's got so much potential. And, you know, we're just trying to do it right and we're trying to consider every. Every factor that's gotta be involved in production.
• 43:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great thing.
• 43:22
  Speaker A: It is.
• 43:23
  Speaker B: Well, friends, we are going to close out another episode of Conservation Stories. I'm really grateful that you were here today, and this is really interesting. We're gonna leave all of the links and all this kind of stuff up on the show notes so that people can go and check it out. And I hope you'll come back.
• 43:43
  Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks.
• 43:44
  Speaker B: I'd love to join us again on the next episode.