HAINAN, China—An automated rubber tapping robot, featuring long-range low-power wide-area networking (LPWAN), has won a first-of-its-kind design award in China. The automation and monitoring system ...

Rubber-tree tapping in Yunnan province, the country’s top grower, has been delayed by severe drought and powdery mildew disease, which can halve production in the worst cases.

The 55-year-old Joseph, who has tapped rubber trees for three decades, said he had lost 200,000 rupees this year and that he would not resume tapping unless rubber prices rose to 150 rupees per kg.

Global natural rubber output could drop for a second straight year in 2015 as prices near six-year lows have prompted Asian farmers to curtail tapping during their peak season.

Natural rubber, most commonly derived from the hevea brasiliensis tree, is a foundation of the global economy. After all, the world uses about 14 million metric tons of natural rubber in over 50,000 ...

Squads of women did the work of collecting the sap. They stopped at each tree, scraping out the chevron gashes in the bark and collecting the latex sap in the cup at the base, probably not more than a ...