NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.

  General   Feb 10, 2025   0   64
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.
NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai.

NAU Navsari, under the dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Dr. Z. P. Patel, created a history on February 6, 2025, by successfully extracting latex from rubber plants grown at the Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas Farm, Waghai. On this occasion, several distinguished guests were present, including Dr. Timur Ahlawat, Director of Research; Dr. Lalit Mahatma, Associate Director of Research; Dr. Ajay Patel, Principal, College of Agriculture, Waghai; Dr. Gopal Vadodariya, In-charge of Hill Millets Research Station, Rambhas, Waghai; Dr. Lalit Ghetiya, In-charge of KVK; Dr. Pankaj Bhalerao from NAU, Navsari; and scientists from the Indian Rubber Research Institute, Kottayam, Dr. Thomson Abraham, Dr. Meena Singh, and Dr. Phebe Joseph.

For the testing feasibility of rubber plantation in Gujarat; NAU, Navsari signed a MoU with the Rubber Board, Kottayam. Under this agreement, Rubber Board provided 1,200 plants of the RRII-430 rubber clone for testing purposes. These plants were planted at the Agricultural Experimentation Station, Paria, and 14 other centers of NAU, Navsari. The performance of rubber plants at various stations was promising, with the best results observed at the Hill Millets Research Center, Rambhas Farm, Waghai, in Dang district.

Recently, latex has been extracted from three-year-old plants to test its quality and production capacity. Generally, latex is extracted from six to seven years old plants for the economic yield. The yield and flow of the extracted latex were found to be similar to that of plants of the same age in Kerala. These results have further strengthened the possibilities of rubber latex production in Gujarat. This experiment could prove to be a milestone in increasing farmers' income.

Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor stated that most of the rubber-producing regions in South Gujarat and Kerala fall under the 19.1 agro-ecological sub-region, which has a warm and humid climate. He expressed hope that Gujarat will emerge as a new hub for rubber production in the coming years. This development will provide an alternative crop option in climate change scenario and create new employment opportunities in the region.