University award for Continental’s Taraxagum project

The Taraxagum research project into the use of rubber from Russian dandelions in tyres has led to Continental and Professor Dirk Prüfer from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology being awarded the University of Münster’s Transfer Prize. Continental shares that the €10,000 prize was awarded for the successful transfer of expertise from biotechnology research to commercial application.

The prize money will be donated to the work of the University of Münster’s botanical gardens, the site where the first dandelion plants for the research into dandelion rubber were bred.

Continental plans to open its own Taraxagum research laboratory in Anklam, Germany later this year, and the tyre maker expects tyres containing dandelion rubber to be ready for series production in five years‘ time at the earliest.