Search Results (12)

Valorizing natural resources through sustainable and eco-friendly processes is a cornerstone in pursuing a greener and more sustainable future. This study focuses on the green extraction of valuable compounds from rubber seed trees (Hevea brasiliensis). This underutilized resource has the potential to yield bioactive compounds of economic and ecological significance. We explore the application of environmentally friendly extraction techniques, including supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), to harness the bioactive potential of rubber seeds. Our research encompasses a comprehensive analysis of the extracted compounds, including their characterization and quantification using state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Environmental and economic sustainability aspects are evaluated, shedding light on the green extraction processes’ ecological footprint and economic feasibility. The paper also delves into these extracted compounds’ diverse applications and utilization prospects, ranging from pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals to cosmetic and industrial products. We discuss the commercial potential, market opportunities, and emerging trends these sustainable endeavours may shape. In conclusion, this study paves the way for a more sustainable path in harnessing valuable compounds from rubber seed trees, exemplifying the potential for green extraction techniques to play a pivotal role in the journey toward environmental stewardship and economic prosperity. Full article

The rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) is the most important commercial plant for producing natural rubber. Immature seed inner integument and anther-derived somatic embryogenesis techniques play a crucial role in the in vitro large-scale propagation and genetic transformation of the rubber tree. However, somatic embryogenesis is highly genotype-dependent, that is, only a limited number of H. brasiliensis genotypes, such as CATAS73397, CATAS917, and PB260, can be efficiently induced by somatic embryogenesis and used for large-scale propagation or transformation. The genotype dependence of the somatic embryogenesis technique is a conundrum for the application of Hevea biotechnology in most commercially important cultivars, such as Reken628 and CATAS879. Previous studies have shown that several somatic embryogenesis regulators can overcome genotype dependence and enhance the transformation and regeneration efficiency of recalcitrant plants and cultivars. In this review, we first describe the relevant successful applications of somatic embryogenesis technology in seedling production and genetic modification of H. brasiliensis. Second, we discuss the genotype dependence of somatic embryogenesis as the major challenge currently. Third, we summarize the recent significant advances in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying somatic embryogenesis in other plants. Finally, we suggest a roadmap for using somatic embryogenesis regulatory genes to facilitate genotype-dependent somatic embryogenesis technology in H. brasiliensis. Full article

Eucommia ulmoides, a single extant species of Eucommiaceae, is a perennial deciduous tree distributed across central China. The bark of E. ulmoides is rich in chlorogenic acid and flavonoids that possesses high medicinal value, whereas its leaves and seeds contain abundant Eucommia ulmoides gum (EUG), which is a unique strategic resource in China that can be used as a substitute for natural rubber. Under the background of global warming, the evaluation of habitat suitability is of great significance for the protection and management of E. ulmoides. For this study, maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling was employed to simulate the potentially suitable region for E. ulmoides over four periods (current, 2050s, 2070s, and 2090s) under four climate change scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5), as well as to analyze changes in the spatial patterns of E. ulmoides and the essential environmental factors affecting the growth and distribution of E. ulmoides. The results revealed that the current potentially suitable region for E. ulmoides was 211.14 × 10⁴ km², which accounted for 21.99% of China’s territory. The low impact areas for E. ulmoides were distributed in Guizhou, Zhejiang, Sichuan, eastern Chongqing, southern Shaanxi, western Hubei, eastern Shandong, southern Anhui, southern Gansu, and northern Yunnan Provinces. The key bioclimatic variables affecting the distribution of E. ulmoides were mean diurnal range and mean temperature of the coldest quarter, with their contribution rates of 53.8% and 41.4%, respectively. Furthermore, core distributional shift analysis indicated that the center of the potentially suitable regions of E. ulmoides exhibited a general trend of shifting to the northwest and high latitudes. Finally, conservation strategies are proposed, such as the establishment of ex situ protection sites and germplasm resource collection. Future researchers can conduct further studies by integrating the quality of E. ulmoide herbs and environmental variables. In this study, for technical reasons, we only considered the effect of climate on species distribution without considering other biotic and abiotic factors, which can be further addressed by future researchers. Full article

The labor relationship developed by the Amazonian riverside dwellers is weakened due to changes in temperature, the flood pulse, the ebb tide of the rivers, and precipitation. In this context, this research aimed to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the socio-biodiversity chains in the region of Médio Juruá-Amazonas. Collections were carried out in two communities located in the Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) Uacari, in July 2022, through participatory workshops. The communities affirm that the extreme flood events of the Juruá River are more intense in recent years, both concerning the extreme levels of the river and in periodicity and speed of flooding. The large floods have impacted the productive calendar, generating losses for farmers. In addition, rubber trees and cassava plantations have been dying with the large floods, and oil seeds are being carried by the water before harvest. The physical data of the Juruá River shows a trend of increasing extreme floods over the last 40 years for the period November to April, highlighting the years 2013 to 2015 and 2021 with the largest positive anomalies. Farmers have adapted their calendars, modified some planting areas to locations with higher altitudes and farther from the river banks, and have sought new rubber matrices. The results point to the need for mitigation and adaptation measures promoted by local governments. Full article

The growth in the volume of modern construction and the manufacture of reinforced concrete structures (RCSs) presents the goal of reducing the cost of building materials without compromising structures and opens questions about the use of environmentally friendly natural raw materials as a local or full replacement of traditional mineral components. This can also solve the actual problem of disposal of unclaimed agricultural waste, the features of which may be of interest to the construction industry. This research aimed to analyze the influence of preparation factors on concrete features with partial substitution of coarse aggregate (CA) with rubber tree (RT) seed shells and to determine the optimal composition that can make it possible to attain concrete with improved strength features. CA was replaced by volume with RT seed shells in an amount from 2% to 16% in 2% increments. Scanning electronic microscopy was employed to investigate the structure of the obtained concrete examples. The maximum increase in strength features was observed when replacing coarse filler with 4% RT seed shell by volume and amounted to, for compressive and axial compressive strength (CS) and tensile and axial tensile strength (TS) in twisting, 6% and 8%, respectively. The decrease in strain features under axial compression and under axial tension was 6% and 5%, respectively. The modulus of elasticity increased to 7%. The microstructure of hardened concrete samples with partial replacement of CA with RT seed shells in the amount of 2%, 4% and 6% was the densest with the least amount of pores and microcracks in comparison with the structure of the sample of the control composition, as well as samples with the replacement of CA with RT seed shells in an amount of more than 6%. The expedient effective replacement of CA with RT shells led to a reduction in battered stone of up to 8%. Full article

Lectins or carbohydrate-binding proteins are widely distributed in seeds and vegetative parts of edible plant species. A few lectins from different fruits and vegetables have been identified as potential food allergens, including wheat agglutinin, hevein (Hev b 6.02) from the rubber tree and chitinases containing a hevein domain from different fruits and vegetables. However, other well-known lectins from legumes have been demonstrated to behave as potential food allergens taking into account their ability to specifically bind IgE from allergic patients, trigger the degranulation of sensitized basophils, and to elicit interleukin secretion in sensitized people. These allergens include members from the different families of higher plant lectins, including legume lectins, type II ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIP-II), wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), jacalin-related lectins, GNA (Galanthus nivalis agglutinin)-like lectins, and Nictaba-related lectins. Most of these potentially active lectin allergens belong to the group of seed storage proteins (legume lectins), pathogenesis-related protein family PR-3 comprising hevein and class I, II, IV, V, VI, and VII chitinases containing a hevein domain, and type II ribosome-inactivating proteins containing a ricin B-chain domain (RIP-II). In the present review, we present an exhaustive survey of both the structural organization and structural features responsible for the allergenic potency of lectins, with special reference to lectins from dietary plant species/tissues consumed in Western countries. Full article

In the latex production chain, rubber tree seeds (Hevea brasiliensis) represent an underutilized fraction with high potentialities, which can increase the sustainability of the whole process if rightly valorized. In the present study, the quality of all the fractions obtained from the rubber fruit were evaluated, with the aim to identify possible applications for their valorization with a circular economy perspective. Seeds from five different varieties of rubber tree were analyzed. Furthermore, a whole mass and energy balance was defined, which has allowed us to define hypothetical production scenarios. The obtained results show negligible differences among varieties. Shells and capsules have shown a composition similar to woody biomass, with high heating values (more than 16.5 MJ kg⁻¹), low nitrogen content (below 0.5% on weight basis (w/w)) and reduced ash content (0.51% w/w and 1.90% w/w, respectively). Kernels were chemically extracted comparing two different solvents: n-hexane and ethanol. Both solvents showed similar extraction yields, i.e., 49% w/w and 46% w/w for n-hexane and ethanol, respectively. The resulting extraction flour was characterized by a high protein content (around 40% w/w) making it suitable for animal feeding. The rubber seed oil could be used in blends of different vegetable oils for biodiesel production. All this information is useful for improving the sustainability of the latex production chain and to assess the sustainability of possible bioenergy value chains. Full article

Oil palm is recognized as a golden crop, as it produces the highest oil yield among oil seed crops. Malaysia is the world’s second largest producer of palm oil; 16% of its land is planted with oil palm. To cope with the ever-increasing global demand on edible oil, additional areas of oil palm are forecast to increase globally by 12 to 19 Mha by 2050. Multisensor remote sensing plays an important role in providing relevant, timely, and accurate information that can be developed into a plantation monitoring system to optimize production and sustainability. The aim of this study was to simultaneously exploit the synthetic aperture radar ALOS PALSAR 2, a form of microwave remote sensing, in combination with visible (red) data from Landsat Thematic Mapper to obtain a holistic view of a plantation. A manipulation of the horizontal–horizontal (HH) and horizontal–vertical (HV) polarizations of ALOS PALSAR data detected oil palm trees and water bodies, while the red spectra L-band from Landsat data (optical) could effectively identify built up areas and vertical–horizontal (VH) polarization from Sentinel C-band data detected bare land. These techniques produced an oil palm area classification with overall accuracies of 98.36% and 0.78 kappa coefficient for Peninsular Malaysia. The total oil palm area in Peninsular Malaysia was estimated to be about 3.48% higher than the value reported by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. The over estimation may be due the MPOB’s statistics that do not include unregistered small holder oil palm plantations. In this study, we were able to discriminate most of the rubber areas. Full article

Rubber trees in southern China are often impacted by natural disturbances that can result in a tilted tree body. Accurate crown segmentation for individual rubber trees from scanned point clouds is an essential prerequisite for accurate tree parameter retrieval. In this paper, three plots of different rubber tree clones, PR107, CATAS 7-20-59, and CATAS 8-7-9, were taken as the study subjects. Through data collection using ground-based mobile light detection and ranging (LiDAR), a voxelisation method based on the scanned tree trunk data was proposed, and deep images (i.e., images normally used for deep learning) were generated through frontal and lateral projection transform of point clouds in each voxel with a length of 8 m and a width of 3 m. These images provided the training and testing samples for the faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN) of deep learning. Consequently, the Faster R-CNN combined with the generated training samples comprising 802 deep images with pre-marked trunk locations was trained to automatically recognize the trunk locations in the testing samples, which comprised 359 deep images. Finally, the point clouds for the lower parts of each trunk were extracted through back-projection transform from the recognized trunk locations in the testing samples and used as the seed points for the region’s growing algorithm to accomplish individual rubber tree crown segmentation. Compared with the visual inspection results, the recognition rate of our method reached 100% for the deep images of the testing samples when the images contained one or two trunks or the trunk information was slightly occluded by leaves. For the complicated cases, i.e., multiple trunks or overlapping trunks in one deep image or a trunk appearing in two adjacent deep images, the recognition accuracy of our method was greater than 90%. Our work represents a new method that combines a deep learning framework with point cloud processing for individual rubber tree crown segmentation based on ground-based mobile LiDAR scanned data. Full article

Crude rubber seed oil (CRSO) is a promising but currently underutilized biodiesel feedstock alternative, extracted by pressing the seeds of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). Rubber trees are cultivated across more than 11.4 million hectares worldwide, mainly in Southeast Asia. Despite their suitability as a biodiesel feedstock source, rubber seeds are currently treated as waste in the monocultural plantation system. To date, no assessments have been performed to examine the potential impact of rubber seed-based biodiesel production on GHG emissions. This study analyses the global warming potential of rubber seed methyl ester (RSME) production in Southeast Asia. The functional unit used is 1 MJ of biodiesel. A sensitivity analysis assesses the influence of key parameters (e.g., rubber seed yield) on the GHG mitigation potential. A scenario analysis evaluates the effect of using RSME by-products for energy generation. In comparison to fossil diesel, RSME has a carbon mitigation potential of 67 g CO₂.eq. MJ⁻¹, based on allocation by mass. On the condition of compliance with international sustainability standards that call for deforestation-free value chains, the generation of RSME biodiesel on rubber tree plantations in Southeast Asia would have a total mitigation potential of around 2.8 million tonnes of CO₂ eq. per year. Full article

The rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) is exploited mainly for latex in view of its economic importance. However, one of its auxiliary products, the rubber seed, does not find any major applications, and hence, even the natural production of seeds itself remains underutilized. In this study, microwave-assisted Soxhlet extraction is used as a green alternative to extract the oil from seeds at a reaction time of 90 min and microwave power of 300 W. The objective of the study is to evaluate the effects of the processing conditions, including drying time, temperature, solid–solvent ratio, and extraction solvent, on the yield of rubber seed oil. Moreover, the microwave-assisted aqueous extraction (MAAE) under acidic conditions is also investigated. Based on the results, n-hexane gave the best yield at an optimized 1:20 seed–hexane ratio at 72 °C compared with the conventional Soxhlet method and the acidic MAAE. Furthermore, the chemical characteristics of the oil showed a high value of free fatty acids (% FFA) (1.15–7.61%) and an iodine value (IV) that ranges from 100–150. As a semi-drying oil, rubber seed oil (RSO) can be used as an ingredient for surface coating and in the formulation of products where the presence of unsaturation is important. Full article

A homolog of MOTHER OF FT AND TFL1 (MFT) was isolated from Hevea brasiliensis and its biological function was investigated. Protein multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis revealed that HbMFT1 conserved critical amino acid residues to distinguish MFT, FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and TERMINAL FLOWER1 (TFL1)-like proteins and showed a closer genetic relationship to the MFT-like group. The accumulation of HbMFT1 was generally detected in various tissues except pericarps, with the highest expression in embryos and relatively higher expression in roots and stems of seedlings, flowering inflorescences, and male and female flowers. HbMFT1 putative promoter analysis showed that tissue-specific, environmental change responsive and hormone-signaling responsive elements were generally present. HbMFT1 was strongly induced under a short-day condition at 28 °C, with the highest expression after the onset of a day. Overexpression of HbMFT1 inhibited seed germination, seedling growth, and flowering in transgenic Arabidopsis. The qRT-PCR further confirmed that APETALA1 (AP1) and FRUITFULL (FUL) were drastically down-regulated in 35S::HbMFT1 plants. A histochemical β-glucuronidase (GUS) assay showed that HbMFT1::GUS activity was mainly detected in stamens and mature seeds coinciding with its original expression and notably induced in rosette leaves and seedlings of transgenic Arabidopsis by exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) due to the presence of ABA cis-elements in HbMFT1 promoter. These results suggested that HbMFT1 was mainly involved in maintenance of seed maturation and stamen development, but negatively controlled germination, growth and development of seedlings and flowering. In addition, the HbMFT1 promoter can be utilized in controlling transgene expression in stamens and seeds of rubber tree or other plant species. Full article