Natural rubber (NR) is essential to the medical, industrial, defense and transportation industries. Alternative rubber crops are needed to supplement increasing rubber demands which cannot be met by the tropical rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, and to protect supplies in the event of a rubber tree crop collapse, political strife or a pandemic disrupting global rubber supply chains. Taraxacum kok-saghyz, rubber dandelion, has high-molecular-weight NR, substantial rubber content and the ability to grow in temperate regions. It can also grow hydroponically or aeroponically in controlled environments. This work presents a scenario-based cost analysis of requirements to scale up hydroponic rubber dandelion to replace the 1 million metric tons of imported rubber consumed annually by United States manufacturers. Two scale-up scenarios were considered: a single-level, deep water culture greenhouse and an indoor, ten-level hydroponic vertical farm built in a warehouse. Fuel usage, operating costs, electricity consumption, beneficial insect applications, fertilizers, cooling, and more were included for each case. The costs of operation and construction were compared to the value of products to determine potential annual profit. Sensitivity analyses revealed several scenarios which would drastically improve the economics of the hydroponic facilities. A combination of multiple factors may allow economic feasibility. Hydroponic rubber dandelion production can be profitable on a small scale (up to 15 MT of TNR/year) provided leafy greens and inulin are included as coproducts. The validity of scaling up such a system to 100,000 MT TNR/year to meet 10% of US manufacturing requirements depends heavily on successful research-based gains in TNR concentration and root size, the difference in TNR price between a commodity price and a specialty NR, and upon whether or not tropical rubber tree NR is able to continue to provide a stable source of NR for the US.
King-Smith et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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