ABSTRACT
Food production requires sunlight, water, and land. The earth intercepts perhaps only one-half of one-billionth of the electromagnetic radiation from the continuously exploding sun, but this totals more than 400 trillion kilowatt hours per year. The most effective collectors and users of solar energy are green plants, through the marvelous chemistry of photosynthesis. The more sunlight, the more plant growth. Given water and suitable soils, desert regions could be the most productive croplands in the world, as they enjoy long hours of intensive sunlight. The plants that thrive on seawater, and even require its high content of sodium chloride, are called euhalophytes. The salt they must accept in order to get water is stored separately in plant cells where it does not interfere with their metabolism. The vegetable oil is unusual for a product of a seawater-irrigated crop. The oil is extracted conventionally from SOS-7 seed by expeller or chemical solvent, similar to the processes used for soybean oil extraction.
