Super Rubber Tree? PAT PINOL’S RUBBER TREE YIELDS 3.2 KILOS MONTHLY

By Manny Pinol

In July of 2007, my older brother Patricio, a retired police colonel and true-blooded farmer, came to my rubber nursery in Barangay Paco, Kidapawan City and saw several budded rubber seedlings with busted plastic bags strewn around.

The farmer’s instinct in him made him pick up the seedlings which were actually a series of the new Malaysian rubber clones.

He planted a little over 200 of those seedlings in his homelot in the Riverpark Subdivision and in his one-hectare farm in our village in Nueva Vida, M’lang.

The seedlings were all mixed up and there was no way I could be certain what clones they were but less than four years after Col. Pat planted the seedlings, they registered a girth 20.8 inches, which was already two inches more than the required girth of 18 inches before the tree could be tapped to produce latex.

It was not only the growth rate which proved remarkable.

The “reject” rubber seedlings proved to be prolific latex producers.

At an age of 6.5 years now, over 20 of these rubber trees are producing an average of 3.2 kilos every month or 38.4 kilos per tree every year with tapping scheduled every other day.

Yesterday, I checked the trees with Col. Pat and a husband and wife team now tapping the rubber trees – USM agriculture graduate Eusebio “Intsik” Abrea and his wife, Em-em.

Eusebio told me that after two tapping days, the plastic cup would be filled to the brim with latex and he swears he has never seen any rubber tree which could produce that much latex without using any inducers.

Of the over 20 prolific trees, there are about 10 which would fill 3/4 of the plastic cup with only one day of production.

Since it was Col. Pat himself who started tapping his rubber trees, he was able to religiously record the latex production and using his data we were able to come up with this computation on how much a farmer would earn from an hectare of this rubber clone:

– Average latex yield monthly: 3.2 kilos

– Average latex yield yearly: 38.2 kilos

– Average income per tree at P38/kilo of cuplump: P1,459.20

– Estimated annual income of 1 hectare with 500 trees: P729,600

I was stunned with disbelief at the figures we arrived at but the numbers could not be disputed.

With this clone of rubber tree planted in a 10-hectare land in the periphery of Mt. Apo (soil type is definitely a factor), a farmer could earn over P7-M a year!

Yesterday, I instructed the tapper, Intsik Abrea, to separate the cuplumps gathered from each of the over 20 prolific rubber trees in Col. Pat’s farm.

I also asked Col. Pat to coordinate with the Philippine Rubber Research Institute (PRRI) to officially validate the production figures from the rubber trees.

The prolific trees will also be marked so that they could be used as mother trees which would be the source of budding materials in the future.

Once the statistics and production data are validated, these unknown rubber clones could yet prove to be the biggest thing to happen to the Philippine rubber industry.

With greater productivity, the rubber farmer could make big money even with a very low rubber cuplump buying price.

(Photo caption: Rubber tapper Intsik Abrea shows the plastic cup filled to the brim after only two tapping days while my brother, Col. Pat, the farm owner, beams with pride. Also shown in photo is Intsik’s wife, Em-em, and their daughter, Eusebelle. Second photo shows Col. Pat pointing to the plastic latex receptacle filled to the brim after two tapping days.)