Abstract
In view of supporting the rubber product manufacturing sector in Sri Lanka and providing stable income for the peasant community, rubber cultivation is in the process of expanding to the drier regions of the country. Under this programme, rubber was introduced to the Northern region (Dry Zone) in 2010 with a tentative set of agronomic protocols. The present study showed that rubber cultivated in this region under smallholder conditions together with irrigated short term crops, has shown reasonable growth with an average annual girth expansion rate of 8.6cm. A growth curve for the immature phase of rubber was established for the first time for the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Despite some adverse effects of dry weather on photosynthesis and associated physiological parameters, no evidence of permanent damages to photosynthetic apparatus was recorded. Further actions to be taken in the expansion process of rubber cultivation in this region are also discussed.
Highlights
Urbanization and industrialization prevent the expansion of rubber cultivation further in its traditional rubber growing wet regions (WZ)
The present level of value addition to raw rubber produced within the country has already exceeded 70% and at present, raw rubber imports in Sri Lanka are more than exports (MPI, 2015)
This is mainly due to the irrigation provided at early stages of growth. If this could be continued, rubber trees in this region would come to the tappable stage (i.e. 50 cm girth) within seven years. This would be slightly higher than the expected number years in immaturity (i.e. 5-6 years), the growth rate achieved under suboptimal conditions in Sri Lanka is rather remarkable as nine years of immaturity has been recorded for rubber in suboptimal regions in India, i.e. Konkan region of Western India (Chandrashekar et al, 1998) and Bastar region in Chattisgarh state located in central India (Krishan et al, 2007; Krishan 2013; 2015)
Summary
Urbanization and industrialization prevent the expansion of rubber cultivation further in its traditional rubber growing wet regions (WZ). The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has decided to expand rubber cultivation to drier nontraditional regions of the country For this purpose, East and North regions of the country have been focused because their land availability per capita is reasonably higher and because of livelihood consideration of the people, who were entangled in 30 year war. East and North regions of the country have been focused because their land availability per capita is reasonably higher and because of livelihood consideration of the people, who were entangled in 30 year war In this endeavor, rubber was initially grown in the Intermediate Zone (IZ) of Eastern province and it was found to be successful in terms of both agronomic (Iqbal et al, 2010) and social aspects (Rodrigo et al, 2009). The present study was aimed to quantify the growth of immature rubber in this region and to investigate the impact of the prevailing climatic conditions on its physiological parameters
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