“This is probably the most complete study of its type in the history of industry, not just the tire industry,” said Charles Yurkovich, Cooper’s vice president of global research and development. “We feel that the technology and the capability to bring this to market is here. We are very highly confident that it will work.”

Guayule (pronounced why-YOU-lee) grows wild in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It looks somewhat like a milky green tumbleweed, short, stout, and scraggly. It flowers, though the small yellow blooms aren’t all that pretty.

It’s what’s inside that makes guayule so special.

When the plant is crushed, guayule yields both useful resins and a latexlike sap that can be made into rubber.

What remains is a potential biofuel that Mr. Yurkovich said has an energy content equal to that of coal, but without the same harmful pollutants. It can even be distilled into jet fuel.

Cooper and its university, government, and commercial partners have been working a little more than two years to develop all three of those possibilities.

Though synthetic rubber has been widely available since the 1940s, natural rubber remains an important part of modern tires.

“Synthetic rubber is a good portion of what we put in tires, but there’s certain components of the tire that can’t replace natural rubber. It is just a unique material,” said Greg Bowman, manager of innovative technology at Cooper’s Global Technical Center in Findlay.

The hevea trees that produce latex used to make natural rubber are native to the Amazon region of South America, but they aren’t commercially cultivated there because of a widespread blight. Instead, most are grown in Southeast Asia.

Though the supply is stable, growing demand and the potential for blight are concerns, as are fluctuating prices.

Because synthetic rubber is made from petroleum products, it too can experience volatile pricing.

Having a reliable supply of domestic-grown natural rubber could be a boon for not just Cooper, but the whole economy.

That’s one reason the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy have jointly provided a $6.9 million grant to help with Cooper’s research.

“It would be a very big impact on the industry, because you’re creating jobs, you’re creating an industry in the United States,” Mr. Yurkovich said. “You would have more of a consistent supply of a critical material right here.”

It’s long been thought that guayule could be an attractive substitute. During World War II, the U.S. government dedicated significant resources into developing rubber from guayule, but research fell off during peacetime.

Others also have looked to the plant, including an ongoing project by Cooper competitor Bridgestone.

But Cooper officials say they and their partners have gone further than anyone else.

PanAridus, an Arizona agribusiness, is working on seed efficiency. Arizona State University is helping with sustainability studies. Cornell University is mapping the guayule genome.

Help is also coming from the Agricultural Research Service in Albany, Calif.

“We’re looking at the total package,” Mr. Bowman said. “We really want to understand the genetics of the plants.”

Improvements have already come in better understanding direct seeding, an important step to developing guayule into a commercial crop. Because the plant requires less water than food crops, it can be grown in drier climates and require little to no irrigation, and it wouldn’t compete with food crops for existing farmland. Researchers hope eventually to be able to increase guayule’s rubber production.

“If you can develop the plant so it produces a high level of natural rubber, you can essentially turn desert wasteland into viable farmland,” Mr. Yurkovich said.

Of course, that requires the rubber from guayule to work in tires.

So far, so good. Testing is under way on tires made with some guayule-derived rubber, and the company says initial impressions have been good.

Chief Executive Officer Roy Armes recently told analysts on the company’s third quarter earnings call that early testing has shown tires made with guayule are performing at least as well as those with traditional natural rubber.

Cooper is essentially starting from scratch, developing the tires along with the manufacturing process to make them.

“It’s a much larger scale than what other people have done in the past,” Mr. Bowman said. “We’re making more rubber. We have to reformulate it, because it’s not a drop-in [substitute]. And because we’re replacing synthetics, we’re actually chemically modifying a few of the polymers.”

Also setting Cooper’s efforts apart, executives say, is that the company is attempting to replace not just natural rubber, but synthetic rubber as well.

“How far can we go? We don’t know completely yet,” Mr. Bowman said.

However, officials say even if they can replace 10 percent of the current rubber in tires with guayule the project will be a success.

Cooper officials believe they will produce tires made from guayule on a broad scale. When is a bigger question.

“We believe it’s going to work, and we are highly confident it will come to market,” Mr. Yurkovich said. “The timing is still a question based on scale costs and ability, but we do believe the technology is here to make it work.”
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