ABSTRACT
Oilseed plants and trees, cultivated and wild, generally exhibit a remarkable diversity of characteristics which make them potentially attractive for fuel and chemical uses. Many oilseeds are found in temperate or tropical countries, thriving on otherwise unproductive marginal lands in dry, wet, hilly, nutrient-poor or saline soils. If such oilseeds become domesticated and widely adopted for chemical and fuel farming on marginal lands, some of the direct pressure on good lands needed for food production might be avoided. Whether marginal-land oilseeds can contribute in a major way to future fuel and chemical stocks with ecological as well as economic acceptability is an important issue for study, with many ramifications. Marginal-land oilseeds should not be regarded as low-yielding oilseeds because they grow on less than prime farmland. Buffalo gourd and some other arid-land oilseeds may have important advantages over another arid-land plant.
