Natural rubber is an essential feedstock for many manufacturing and medical industries, yet world supply is reliant on a clonally propagated tree, hevea brasiliensis, grown in deforested areas of…

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $650,000 to the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. on September 1, 2026, under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI, CFDA 10.310) to expand public guayule germplasm and develop genomic resources for natural rubber breeding.

The recipient will incorporate formerly private high-yielding guayule accessions and recent collections from the native range in northern and central Mexico into the publicly available germplasm base. Field-grown accessions will be phenotyped non-destructively for natural rubber content using near-infrared spectroscopy, a high-throughput approach recently adapted to guayule. Whole genome skim sequencing will assess population structure across new and existing USDA guayule germplasm and identify loci associated with natural rubber accumulation and agronomic traits of interest. These activities address genetic diversity constraints and past limitations in genomic resources and rapid phenotyping that have hindered guayule breeding programs, positioning guayule as a viable domestic alternative natural rubber source to reduce reliance on clonally propagated Hevea brasiliensis grown in deforested tropical Southeast Asia.

The award is a Project Grant with performance at Ithaca, New York, running through August 31, 2029.

Natural rubber is an essential feedstock for many manufacturing and medical industries, yet world supply is reliant on a clonally propagated tree, hevea brasiliensis, grown in deforested areas of tropical SE asia. Efforts are underway to diversify NR sources biologically and geographically. One such domestic alternative is parthenium argentatum (guayule), a drought-tolerant shrub native to the southwest US and northern mexico. Guayule has been the target of multiple breeding efforts in the last 100 years due to its high-quality NR and hypo-allergenic latex. Despite guayule's many benefits, breeding has been limited by low genetic diversity, with most germplasm coming from closely related accessions. In addition, past guayule breeding programs have lacked genomic resources and the ability to rapidly, and non-destructively, assess NR accumulation in the field. This proposal aims to dramatically expand the publicly available guayule germplasm by incorporating formerly private high yielding accessions as well as recent collections from its native range in northern and central mexico. These accessions will be grown in the field in arizona and non-destructively phenotyped for NR content using near-infrared spectroscopy (nirs), a high throughput approach that has only recently been adapted to guayule. Lastly, whole genome skim sequencing will be performed to assess the population structure of both new and existing USDA guayule germplasm and identify loci associated with NR accumulation and other agronomic traits of interest. These objectives will address many of the major roadblocks for guayule breeding programs and help make IT a viable domestic alternative source of NR.