7 U.S.C. § 178d — Research and development program by Secretary of Commerce

The Secretary of Commerce must start and run research, technology development, technology transfer, and demonstration projects to test whether it's economically workable to manufacture and sell natural rubber from Parthenium or other hydrocarbon-containing plants — or other critical agricultural materials from native crops of strategic and industrial importance. This must include, at least: (a) researching extraction and processing techniques; (b) analyzing the economics of producing native latex, including usable byproducts; (c) studying the environmental, social, and economic effects of commercially developing native latex; (d) evaluating how marketable Parthenium rubber and rubber from other such plants would be; (e) improving current and future extraction and manufacturing methods, including ones that use solar energy; (f) developing records on natural rubber manufacturing and making them available to other federal and state agencies and interested private parties; and (g) where appropriate, doing this same kind of research on other native crops (besides Parthenium and similar plants) that could supply critical strategic and industrial materials, following the approach in (a) through (f).