Germany'S Fraunhofer Institute has joined forces with tyre giant Continental to build the world's first pilot plant to extract rubber from dandelions to make vehicle tyres.

The first prototype tyres are expected be tested on the roads within a few years. If successful, the project could offer Europe and other temperate zones around the world a viable alternative to rubber from subtropical rubber trees. Dandelion leaves naturally contain latex and during World War II, when there was a severe shortage of conventional rubber from trees due to supply interruptions, rubber derived from dandelions was used as a substitute, although it was not as economically viable. Once again, the world is facing rubber shortages, as disease threatens rubber plantations and demand grows, so scientists are looking for alternatives.

A small pilot facility built by Fraunhofer and Continental researchers in Münster can already produce 1 t of rubber per batch, but they will now work to develop, refine and scale up the process, work which they expect will take around five years. The researchers are also developing dandelion plants which produce much higher yields of latex.

Dirk Prüfer, head of the department of functional and applied genomics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, who is leading the research, explains that the researchers have identified the genes responsible for higher latex production, and used this knowledge to breed higher-yielding varieties.

Fraunhofer researchers have shown that rubber produced from dandelion latex is of the same quality as rubber from rubber trees. The institute points to several main advantages that dandelions have over the rubber tree: namely, that it grows over the space of one year, rather than several, that the plants can be harvested immediately, optimised by breeding more quickly, and are less vulnerable to pests. Dandelions can also be grown in temperate regions on ordinary, domestic cropland, and on ground unsuitable for other crops.

“Rubber extraction from the dandelion root is markedly less affected by weather than the rubber obtained from the rubber tree. Based on its agricultural modesty, it holds entirely new potential – especially for cropland that is lying fallow today. Since we can grow it in much closer proximity to our production sites, we can further reduce both the environmental impact as well as our logistics costs by a substantial margin,” says Nikolai Setzer, Continental's managing director for tyres.