Scientists at the University of Calgary have discovered that the lettuce plant might be able to produce a new form of rubber, according to reports by the Calgary Herald.

University of Calgary Associate professor Dae-Kyun Ro and PhD student Yang Qu discovered that once a lettuce plant bolts, the elongated stem produces milky latex containing a biopolymer from which they identified a key enzyme that can synthesize natural rubber.

A plant bolts when it sends up a tall flower stalk in a very short period of time. This occurs when the plant has gone to seed.

This finding represents the first natural biosynthetic model for rubber production in more than half a century, according to media reports.

“Nobody knew how natural rubber is synthesized in plants so we decided to use lettuce as a model system. We found it produces very high quality natural rubber but of a very low quantity,” Ro told the Calgary Herald. Ro added “the quality is almost the same as that from the Brazilian rubber tree.”

Although the researchers worked primarily on lettuce, they believe that future commercial production will require a different plant since lettuce produces natural rubber in such small quantities. The scientists told the Calgary Herald that the genes from the lettuce could help goldenrod – a Canadian weed that Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the Firestone Tire Co. tried to research in the 1930s – produce high quality rubber.

The scientists will also conduct similar research with Russian dandelion with the hopes of producing a prototype plant that is commercially viable within 5 to 10 years.