科研之友
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摘要
Eucommia ulmoides Oliver is one of the few woody plants producing trans-polyisoprene (TPI or Eucommia rubber). Eucommia fruits contain average 12-17% of TPI, much higher than in leaf or bark. However, commercialization of TPI production from Eucommia fruits is confronted with two major problems: the low yield and high cost of fruit harvest. To develop an economically viable solution to those two problems, we conducted a 9-year study from 1998 to 2006 to compare the fruit or leaf production among different training systems (orchard-like model vs conventional model), cultivars (conventional vs new cultivars) and tree densities. Our results showed that the trees grafted with the new cultivar commenced fruiting about 3 years earlier and produced significantly higher fruit yield over the study period than the non-grafted Eucommia trees. This study also demonstrated for the first time that the orchard system with a tree planting density of 3 m x 3 m and a female proportion of up to 90% yielded 40 times as much fruit as the conventional model without using the new cultivars or 5 times as much as the conventional model using the new cultivar grafted trees. Eucommia orchard in spacing 3 m x 3 m yielded more than 4000 kg ha(-1) fruit in 2006, equivalent to 520 kg ha(-1) of TPI, similar to low yield of cis-1,4-polyisoprene (CPI) from Hevea brasiliensis plantations. The relatively low tree height in the orchard system also significantly reduced the cost of fruit harvest, as compared to the conventional model. We estimated that the input-output ratio of managing one hectare Eucommia orchard was 646% and 642% with planting densities of 1665 trees ha(-1) and 1112 trees ha(-1), respectively. Our results suggested that commercialization of using orchard-like model for TPI is economically viable.
- 出版日期2013-3
- 单位CSIRO; 中国林业科学研究院
