Abstract

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Natural Rubber (NR) is a tree crop originated from South America; mainly cultivated for its latex. The first usage of the latex was to rub off pencil marks; hence the name “Rubber” was coined to the substance. The crop gained global awareness since 1876 and its production became widely spread since the 19th century. The first and second World wars however posed some challenges to the crop’s cultivation and marketing which led to the discovery of synthetic rubber (SR) by a Russian chemist in 1910. The SR competes with NR in usage. Climatic factors are crucial elements that determine the yield of rubber latex as indicated by earlier studies. In this study, a time-series data for 31 years (1983 - 2013) on statistics of rubber latex yield, temperatures (maximum and minimum), relative humidity (maximum and minimum), rainfall and wind speed were obtained from Tapping and Metrology Units of Rubber Research Institute of Nigeria (RRIN) for analysis. Regression model was used to estimate the specific coefficients of the effects of the seven climatic factors on rubber latex yield in RRIN, Iyanomo, Edo state. The tapping method adopted was half spiral (S/2) and alternate days (d/2) techniques. The results of the findings indicate that R2 , (0.643) and F-value was 5.928. This implies that the 64.3% of the variation in rubber latex yield in RRIN under the period of review was jointly explained by the independent variables considered in this study (the climatic factors). Specially, the results revealed that Rainfall, Maximum and Minimum Temperature as well as age of rubber plant had positive coefficient, hence were positively correlated with the rubber latex yield, while Wind speed, Maximum and Minimum relative humidity had negative coefficient, thus were inversely correlated with the rubber latex yield in the study area. The study concluded that the need to evaluate the environmental conditions to determine suitable climatic factors for rubber cultivation is paramount; and recommended that whoever wants to go into rubber farming should first endeavour to study the climatic factors of the place and compare with the climatic requirements of rubber available in literature. Planting rubber in marginal climatic requirements of rubber should be experimented first before going into commercial production.

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