Word: jojoba
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Dates: during 1975-1975
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...many years the Indians and early settlers of the American Southwest treasured the oil they pressed from the beans of the wild jojoba shrub. In Arizona and California the jojoba (pronounced ho-ho-bah) oil was used as a nostrum for almost every ill: to ease childbirth, as a remedy for cancer, even as a laxative. Spanish colonists liked to rub the waxy, colorless oil on their mustaches. Last week a panel of National Research Council scientists reported that the jojoba bean may also be a panacea for the endangered sperm whale...
...fact, there was. In the 1930s, Robert A. Greene, a chemist at the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture, noted that there was a remarkable chemical similarity between jojoba-bean oil and that of the sperm whale. Other researchers confirmed his findings; the university's Office of Arid Lands Studies still publishes an occasional bulletin called Jojoba Happenings to promote cultivation of the bean. But until recently sperm-whale oil was still plentiful, and efforts to substitute jojoba oil did not attract much commercial enthusiasm...
Economic Boost. In its new report, the Washington panel laments that neglect. It emphasizes that jojoba-bean oil could "probably be used as a sperm oil substitute for the complete range of uses." Furthermore, the report notes that growing the dark, peanut-sized beans could provide an economic boost for the impoverished Indian reservations in the Southwest. The hardy, long-lived (up to 200 years) shrubs could readily be cultivated in desert land that has until now been almost totally unproductive. The panel conceded that the startup costs for a jojoba plantation would be high, but after the plants reach...