
Meadowfoam Blooms as Alternative CropBy Linda
Cooke March 7, 1997Meadowfoam oil can fill consumer
demands for more natural ingredients in cosmetics and still promise smoother,
younger-looking skin. Scientists with USDAs Agricultural Research Service are finding
more applications for the oil in the cosmetics industry as well as a
biodegradable industrial lubricant. Grown mainly in Oregon, meadowfoam is a pretty flowering plant and a boon to
that states grass seed farmers in two ways. In the past, farmers who
wanted to switch from one grass seed variety to another typically left the
fields fallow for a year, then burned the fields to eliminate any of the old
grass crops seed. Burning fields is now illegal in Oregon. Instead, farmers can plant
meadowfoam in the fallow years, combating unwanted grass seed sprouts with
herbicides and positioning themselves for a share of the $27.1 billion that
U.S. consumers spend annually on beauty products. ARS research is providing the
information needed to make meadowfoam an economically viable alternative crop. ARS scientists gave the growing meadowfoam industry another boost when they
solved mysterious cloudiness in oil from the 1993 and 1994 crops that made it
undesirable for cosmetics manufacturers. The scientists pinpointed the problem:
a harmless wax that could be removed from the oil with a centrifuge. That
discovery saved meadowfoam processors some $2 million in potential lost sales
and taught processors to handle harvested meadowfoam carefully to avoid
crushing the seedcoat into the oil. The February issue of Agricultural Research, the
monthly publication of ARS, contains a report on ARS work with this
up-and-coming alternative crop. Magazine articles are on the World Wide Web in
.pdf (Portable Document Format) files at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ARScientific contact: Terry A. Isbell, USDA-ARS, New Crops Research
Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Peoria, IL, phone:
(309) 681-6235,[email protected],
http://www.ncaur.gov. U.S. Department of Agriculture | |