Guayule, Parthenium argentatum, is a shrub native to America, adapted to arid and semi-arid. It has a range of resources potentially very interesting, lipids, terpenes (used against termites) including latex. An American company, Yulex corporation, already operates the latex for the manufacture of surgical gloves and condoms. This company has developed a patented proprietary technology, to create medical products of biological origin from guayule. Yulex Natural Rubber (R) to provide medical devices, the characteristics of a natural rubber completely free of allergens associated with latex allergy type I. The company Yulex Corporation has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in

Recently, researchers at the ARS have shown that guayule could also represent an interesting raw material for energy production. Chemist Colleen M. McMahan Research Center of the ARS Albany, California, is a method to optimize biofuel production from this plant. The process uses bagasse resulting from the extraction of latex. The technique called "organosolv", consists of a pre treatment to increase the efficiency of fermentation of bagasse into ethanol. Guayule bagasse is particularly interesting for the production of energy as the plant cell wall possesses extremely rich in cellulose.

Many advantages are described as the exploitation of this process: It is economically interesting because the material is an industrial waste not recovered to this day. The production of energy from guayule bagasse would be equivalent to that produced from coal, the order of 20,000 kJ / kg of bagasse. Not used for human or animal consumption, it is not the food market. Moreover, the production would not be cleaner, since the extraction of guayule latex is made by grinding (not by bleeding from the tree), necessitating the use of any chemical solvent. In addition, guayule lives in an ecosystem where many other crops can not grow, its culture, therefore, does not compete at the ground surface. Of all the crops in the desert South West of the United States, guayule is one that would require less fertilizer.

For this project, Dr. McMahan has worked with other scientists at the ARS of Pennsylvania and Arizona, Holtman Kevin chemist and engineer Akwasi Boateng, which for its part, has focused its work on converting the Bagasse Guyaule in biodiesel and hydrogen. Mcmahan also collaborates with the company Yulex Biotechnology, Inc, Hayward, California, in order to develop transfer new genes into guayule shrubs to optimize production in latex and therefore bagasse.

Source: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb09/biofuel0209.htm