Cooper Tire & Rubber Company and its consortium partners, Cornell University, Clemson University, and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service produced several sets of concept passenger car tires in which all the natural and synthetic rubber is replaced by guayule natural rubber. Guayule is a shrub grown primarily in the Southwestern United States. According to Chuck Yurkovitch, Cooper's Senior Vice President, “The results of this grant have been groundbreaking. Never before has it been proven that guayule is a viable source of domestically produced natural rubber for the tire industry. However, through the combined effort of industry, government and academia, the Biomass Research and Development Initiative (BRDI) team has unequivocally demonstrated just that.”
NIFA supported the research through the
BRDI program.
