Determination of the correlation between the accumulation of pigments and natural rubber in Tau-saghyz

Abstract

Natural rubber is a valuable polymer used in a wide variety of industries, from tire manufacturing
to medical products and applications in the food industry. The tau-sagyz rubber plant (Scozonera tausaghyz
Lipcsh et Bosse) is one of the few plants in the world that can be used in the production of natural
rubber when cultivated in culture. To increase the productivity of plants, it is necessary to establish factors
affecting the biosynthesis of natural rubber. In our studies, the level of pigments (chlorophyll–a, b, carotenoids)
was chosen as a factor that may have a positive effect on the accumulation of rubber in the roots of
S. tau-saghyz. For this purpose, samples (leaves, roots) were taken from 3 groups of plants (north, south,
east) in the Karatau mountains of the Kurman-Tas range. The extraction of pigments from leaf samples was
carried out with acetone, and the extraction of rubber from the roots was carried out with hexane. The obtained
data on the content of pigments and rubber in the samples were statistically processed using the t-test
and Pearson correlation analysis. As a result, a statistical difference in the values of pigment accumulation
in leaves and rubber in roots between the 3 studied groups of plants is shown. On the other hand, a very low
level of correlation was found between the accumulation of pigments in the leaves and rubber in the roots in
all three groups. The obtained results reliably showed that the level of pigment accumulation in the leaves
does not affect the accumulation of rubber in the roots of Tau-sagyz.