From the beginning of its domestication, rubber cropping was developed in the industrial sector, consisting of large estates with monospecific plantations. But the small-holding sector progressively increased its share and now owns more than 80% of the world's natural rubber production. Small-holders' plantations sometimes look similar to estates, but most are rubber-based agroforests (in Indonesia) or multicropping systems, especially in the young age (Gouyon, 1996; Viswanathan and Rajasekharan, 2001). The aim of rubber breeding is to provide small-holders as well as agro-industrial estates with an easily reproducible and genetically superior planting material in the form of a varietal type, currently represented by grafted clones, for latex production and, more recently, wood production. Although breeding is a long-term activity, introducing superior clones in plantation and replantation projects proved to be a convenient and cheap way to improve or maintain the profitability of rubber cropping. Now, biotechnologies hold new promise for deriving improved planting material and increasing the efficiency of rubber breeding. This review is an attempt to take stock of the progress made in breeding Hevea rubber worldwide. Hevea (Para rubber) is a tall, deciduous, perennial ligneous tree, with rhythmic growth and orthotropic ramification, belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family. It can reach 30 m high and a girth of over 3 m in its region of origin, the Amazon basin. With a history spanning more than 450 years, it attained prominence only during later half of the nineteenth century as a consequence of the discovery of vulcanization by Goodyear in 1839, which gave to natural rubber the required level of quality and durability for wide industrial utilization. Introduced from the Amazon basin to southeast Asia, it staked almost 40% of the export revenue of Brazil, nearly equaling coffee in importance until 1940 (Dean, 1987). Rubber statistics during 2002 kept Thailand (2.3 mi