Transfer of Hevea seeds from the Amazon to Asia
Traslado de semillas de Hevea del Amazonas a Asia
- Date
- 1876 · confidence high
- Place
- Santarém, Pará, Brazil
- Credited to
- Henry Wickham (Kew Gardens)
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Wickham gathered about 70,000 rubber seeds on the Tapajós and sent them to Kew; a few thousand plants germinated and were shipped to Ceylon and Singapore. Asian plantations ended the Amazonian rubber monopoly.
In Brazil it is regarded as biopiracy; a formal ban on exporting seeds did not exist. Only a small fraction of the seeds germinated.
What it led to
- Rubber plantations in Malaya and Ceylon
- Collapse of the Amazonian rubber boom around 1912
- A basis for the tyre industry