The first recorded information on rubber is the report that Columbus, during his second voyage to America (1493-96) had seen the natives using rubber balls for a game. Rubber is processed from the milky liquid or latex of various erect or climbing woody plants of the tropics and sub-tropics in the hemisphere within 28 degrees north and 28 degrees south of the equator. For two centuries after the Europeans knew it, it remained a chemical curiosity. The study of the properties of rubber by Dr. Priestly, an English man, in 1770, led to the discovery that rubber can be used to remove pencil marks and stains. The discovery later that rubber dissolved in organic fluids like turpentine, can be used for water proofing cotton and leather, and the invention by Mackintosh of the double texture water proofing process are some of the early stages in the use of rubber. It was the discovery of the vulcanization process (heating rubber with sulphur under carefully regulated conditions) by Goodyear in America and Hanock in London in 1839 that revolutionized the industrial use of raw rubber. Vulcanized rubber is harder and more elastic than the raw product and is no longer sensitive to ordinary changes of temperature.

The re-invention of the pneumatic tyres by Dunlop in 1888, and the discovery of organic accelerators in 1907, helped speed up the manufacturing process and reduce the cost. The rubber manufacturing industry has since developed rapidly. The invention of the automobile in 1895 pushed up the demand for rubber further.

The story of rubber cultivation remains an unparalleled example of applied research on agriculture. By selective breeding and vegetative plant propagation, scientific soil management, adoption of optimum planting density and correct tapping intensity, and prophylactic application of fungicides on the canopy it is possible to prevent the abnormal leaf-sheddings in the wet season. Productivity of plantations increased four-fold during the last 50 years.

Kerala accounts for the bulk of the Indian production of natural rubber. But her agro-climatic condition is considered uneconomic for rubber cultivation. The rubber growers accepted the challenge and the production reached its maximum level. In the rate of increase in production and productivity India surpassed all rubber producing countries. Kanjirapally is doing its best to meet the national demand.

By nature, plantation tends to be a big business, for which large areas are required. Planters’ insatiable land hunger, crossed civil and natural barriers in search of land. In a short time they secured land - interests far away from their homes in the HighRanges, Palghat, Malabar, Coorge, Tamilnad distant Mysore etc. These lands were tended into flourishing estates, even larger than the European estates. This bequeathed a generation of young, outstanding plantation entrepreneurs to the nation tested and entrusted by the pioneering ancestors, products of proud agriculture ancestry.

Our basic and primal heritage, however, is the free gifts of nature - the land of ours - with all that it implies and supplies. Whatever the civilization, land is the ultimate support of man and his life, since it is the universal mother that bringsforth food for every living thing. But to an agricultural people land is all in all and we in Kanjirapally are by temperament and tradition primarily an agrarian class. The soil keeps the secret of our destiny, and it is in the land use that we scored our finest victories, that surpassed many in wealth, health, faith and prosperity.