SAMOAN RUBBER

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 270, 13 August 1942, Page 8

SAMOAN RUBBER

Cultivation Difficult In Islands Samoa is not likely to become a source of large rubber supplies to help relieve the United Nations’ shortage of rubber, in the opinion of Mr. Leon Gotz, former general manager of the New Zealand Reparations Estates in Sapioa and a rubber planter with long experience in Malaya. “Rubber is a tropical plant, and Samoa is sub-tropical,” he said. "In Malaya under tropical conditions rubber trees come into bearing in from three to four years. In Samoa it takes from nine to ten years, because of the slower growth. A fifteen-year-old tree in Samoa is about the size of a eix: or seven-year tree in Malaya. Climatic conditions are important. In Malaya the rainfall is practically always in the afternoon. Tapping everywhere in the world is commenced at daylight, because the pressure 'of the sap is then greater, and there is a better flow of the latex. The later in the day tapping is done, the less the flow of latex. If the trees are wet through rainfall in the morning, tapping cannot be done, because the latex would merely flow down the bark and not into the cups placed at the confluence of the channels to catch it. If it comes on to rain while tapping is in progress, and before the latex has been picked u,p by the cups, the latex in the channels is flushed into the ground. Rubber production therefore needs a climate in which the bulk of the rainfall is in the afternoon.”

There were two rubber plantations in Samoa, one at Solaua, and the other at Aleisa, both at a considerable elevation. What other rubber there was in Samoa was interplanted in the cocoa estates, but the amount of rubber available from cocoa plantations was negligible. The rubber trees in Samoa were full of canker and other diseases, said Mr. Gotz, and the mortality among the trees was marked. The maximum yield in Samoa was from 2501 b. to 3001 b. of dry rubl>er an acre, whereas in Malaya yields varied from 7001 b. to 15001 b. an acre. Any concentration on' the commercial growth of rubber In Samoa was unwarranted. There was no land, there with a low enough elevation to make rubber planting successful even in a national emergency, and, moreover, what land was available was too close to the sea. The l>est conditions for rublier were provided by low-lying land well inland in a tropical climate, whereas the island of Upohi has a maximum of 15 miles wide.

Future prospects of. increased production were limited by many factors. Breaking in new ground would take six months for clearing the brush and a further period for lining and planting. Four more years bad to be added to bring trees into bearing, and during that time there would lie the cost of constant weeding and dealing with pests.