ABSTRACT
Buffalo gourd is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In the United States, the plants grow particularly well in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Buffalo gourd is a vigorous, perennial, low-growing, herbaceous vine. Buffalo gourd is a potential new crop for arid lands, used primarily for human food and liquid fuels, and possibly also for chemical extracts and forage. An extensive program of research and development of buffalo gourd was conducted at the University of Arizona, but interest in it waned by 1990. Nevertheless, buffalo gourd remains a very interesting potential new crop because the world has essentially run out of new sources of arable land and of water for agriculture. The needs for exploiting marginal land for food and fuel production are becoming more urgent, and arid, tropical, and subtropical areas of the world are in great need of crops with the properties of buffalo gourd.
