Introduction of Rubber

The Pará rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, is native to the Brazilian Amazon. A University of Oxford plant profile records that in 1869 Pará rubber was identified as an ideal source of rubber, and that the British saw a prospect of growing it in Asia. They had no seed. Henry Wickham, who knew the tree in Amazonia, supplied it. He delivered 70,000 seeds collected in Brazil to Joseph Hooker, Director of Kew, on 14 June 1876.

The seeds were planted promptly. In August 1876 nearly 2,000 seedlings were sent from Kew to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. The Oxford profile notes that the means by which Wickham obtained his seeds has been debated for over a century.

The Department of National Botanic Gardens records that Henarathgoda Botanic Gardens in Gampaha was established in 1876 for the introduction of rubber to Sri Lanka. Dr G.H.K. Thwaites, Director of the Peradeniya gardens, chose the site, and the land was cleared that year. The plantation was placed in the care of Muhandiram A. de Zoysa, the first caretaker of the garden.

The Export Development Board dates the start of the rubber plantation industry to 1876, with the planting of 1,919 seedlings at Henarathgoda. The Rubber Research Institute also gives 1876 for the planting. The gardens department's own account places the planting of the Kew seedlings in 1879. It adds that the plants are said to have sprouted by 1881, and that from the following year their seeds were taken across the island and to some other British colonies.

The Rubber Research Institute records that commercial planting of rubber in Sri Lanka started in 1883. Research followed. In 1909 a group of planters in the Kalutara District agreed to engage a chemist to study the coagulation of rubber. This work was expanded into the Rubber Research Scheme in 1913, with 60% of its funds from the government and the balance from private subscribers.

The Rubber Research Ordinance was incorporated on 30 August 1930. The laboratories moved to Dartonfield, Agalawatte, in 1936, and the scheme was named the Rubber Research Institute of Ceylon in 1951. The institute describes itself as the oldest research institute on rubber in the world. Its work covers plant breeding, the management of plantations and the chemistry of raw rubber.

Rubber remains both a plantation crop and a manufacturing industry. The Export Development Board states that harvesting begins about seven years after planting and that a tree has an economic life of about 25 to 30 years. The main grades of raw rubber are ribbed smoked sheets, crepe rubber, technically specified rubber and latex concentrate.

The Rubber Research Institute records that rubber product manufacture began in 1936 with a tyre retreading facility, and that the sector expanded during the 1980s. Products made in Sri Lanka include solid and pneumatic tyres, gloves, hoses, mats, rubber bands and automotive components. The Export Development Board adds that old trees supply a rubberwood sector, which uses the wood as fuel and processed timber. At Henarathgoda the garden covers 17.4 hectares, and the old railway station that served visiting rubber scientists is still preserved.