The Rubber Board started a nation-wide census on rubber to prepare a comprehensive data base on rubber plantations and rubber growers.

The Board has launched the programme at Pala in Kottayam district which comes under the service area of Thodanal Rubber Producers’ Society.

Census’ objectives

According to Rubber Board officials, the objective of the census is to gather details of the rubber area including total planted area, immature area, mature area, tapping area, the number of trees, year of planting, clones, tapping system and the rain guarding status of the holdings. The census also collects details of the tappers and the crop processing methods.

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The generation of a database and periodical updating is essential for the formulation of detailed mission mode schemes for improving natural rubber production in the country.

The census is being carried out by a mobile application, ‘RUBAC’, developed by the Rubber Board in association with the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, with the active participation of rubber producer’s societies.

The Indian rubber plantation sector is dominated by smallholders who account for 92 per cent of the production and 91 per cent of the planted area in the country. The sector has 1.32 million small rubber growers, and their planted area comes to around 8.2 lakh hectares.