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|Rubber & Budding|
Rubber, Otherwise known as the ‘Elastic Gold’ is the gift of the fertile bank of Amazon River. The Scientific name of rubber is ‘Hevea Brasiliensis’. The rubber cultivation has spread in to the tropical regions of Asia in the nineteenth century. But it took another fifty more years to reach to India. The geographical structure and fertilityof the Iand in Kerala are very ideal for rubber cultivation. The hardworking farmers with the support and the guidance of the officials of Rubber Board, tapped out the money under from the rough and tough bark of the rubber tree even though they were very sceptical in the early days.
The rubber planters in Kerala are generally very adept in scientific method of rubber cultivation. But it is a fact that a majority of them are ignorant of high yielding clones, their method of reproduction, their advantages and disadvantages, so on. So far there is no considerable attempts found form the parts of any private agencies in propagating all these available and valuable informations that are prevalent in the field of rubber cultivation. So, with pleasure and pride, Cheerakuzhy Young Bud Rubber Nursery makes an attempt on raising a novel propagation among rubber planters for rubber cultivation on a large scale.
The Rubber Cultivation started in Kerala at the beginning of the twentith century onwards. During that time, to rasie plantations, farmers planted ordinary germinated rubber seeds or polyclonal seeds directly in the field. In such plantations, each plant showed different character and their quantity of production also differed a lot. In order to overcome this problem a new system of propagation came in to existence. That is known as ‘Budding’.
Budding is a process of in grafting the bud of a plant into another plant. This is a frequent technique for fruit trees but can also be used for many other kinds of nursery stock. An extremely sharp knife is necessary for budding. The principle involved in budding is the replacement of the shoot system of a plant with that of another more desirable plant. In this process, a patch of bark of the seedling plant (stock) is replaced by a patch of bark with a dormant bud (bud patch) taken from the clone to be multiplied. The bud patch and the bud should be handled very carefully and hygienically to avoid damage to them. The bud patch gets attached to the stock permanently and becomes a part of it. The stock is then cut off above the budded portion and the grafted bud develops in to a shoot (scion) exhibiting the characters of the plant from which it was taken. The new tree thus formed is a two-part tree, comprising a root system belonging to the stock plant and a shoot system contributed by the donor of the bud.
There are many kinds of techniques adopted in Rubber Budding. Howerer, mainly there are two tupes of conventional methods widely used. They are ‘Brown Budding’ and ‘Green Budding’. Besides, these two techniques, a novel method known as ‘Young Budding’ is also developed by shri. K.C. Kuriakose of Cheerakuzhy Young Bud Rubber Nursery. This new technique is very prominent among the rubber planters throughout Kerala.