Ecological Niche Modelling in Hevea brasiliensis

Hevea brasiliensis, a tree species of Amazonian origin, is the only commercial source of natural rubber. Natural rubber has been a strategic industrial raw materiel in the present world of Industrial development and higher population growth. Therefore, there is increasing demand for natural rubber for manufacturing more than 5000 products of domestic use and blending with synthetic rubber to making automobile tyre. But, the limiting factor is that the species is distributed only in few countries in the world such as South Asian countries, China and a few African countries. There is pressing need to identify new regions where the species can be grown profitably to produce more rubber to meet the increasing demand. Climate, topography, anthropogenic intervention and crop economics are the most important factors that determine the distribution of this species. Ecological Niche modelling is the most widely used approach to predict the distribution of any species with respect to appropriate climate and other variables. This book is designed to study the relation between the climate and distribution of Hevea species and to predict its potential to spread to new regions.