Whatever Happened to Jojoba?

It was 1980, and jojoba was the darling of the venture capital crowd. Enthusiasts were succumbing to jojoba fever as if to a new virus. Professional people were leaving lucrative jobs to become jojoba farmers. Jojoba crusaders were trumpeting a grand scheme to save the sperm whale, render desert lands productive, conserve water and oil, revolutionize the cosmetics and lubricants industries, and (perhaps incidentally) make a whopping profit in the bargain. "Jojoba" was engraved in large letters across shampoo bottles, signaling the importance of this new ingredient, and The Bean was King.

Ten years later, farmers, investors, and shampoo users are catching their collective breath, looking around, and asking, "Whatever happened to jojoba?" The jojoba shrub and its oily brown nut are still being grown on plantations in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and a dozen foreign countries, although total acreage is down from 40,000 in 1985-86 to about 15,000 that were managed actively in 1989.

It's safe to say that the promise of jojoba is still that a promise, and pioneer growers are determined to see the promise through to its fulfillment. To understand where jojoba production is going, one needs to know where it has been.

Although its botanical name is Simmondsia chinensis, jojoba (pronounced ho-HO-bah) is not from China but the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, northern Mexico, and Baja California as well as the Colorado Desert in California. A cousin of boxwood, it grows on dry slopes and along washes, from sea level to 4,000 feet. Its leathery gray-green leaves are browsed by deer and livestock; hence its nicknames, deernut and goatnut. Indians of the Southwest occasionally ate the nuts or ground them to make a coffee-like drink. They used the oil for cooking, dressing leather, and conditioning hair and skin.

Jojoba's male and female flowers grow on separate plants, its pollen is carried by the wind, and it is very sensitive to frost. Its fruit is a capsule with a husk that turns brown as it ripens, giving it the look of an elongated acorn; when the husk shatters, one and sometimes two brown fruits drop to the ground.

In 1925 Boyce Thompson Arboretum Director F. J. Crider began to investigate the use of jojoba to control soil erosion because its taproot can grow to 35 feet. Chemists at the University of Arizona in Tucson looked into the composition of jojoba oil.

They turned up the surprising fact that jojoba "oil," which constitutes 49 to 56 percent of the weight of the nut, is actually a liquid wax. It is unique among vegetable oils because it is very stable and doesn't become rancid even when subjected to high temperatures and pressures.

Early in the 1970s, conservationists became interested in the oil because its structure is remarkably like that of sperm whale oil. Jojoba oil might serve as a renewable substitute for sperm whale oil, thus reducing pressure on the endangered species.

In the middle '70s, the Arab oil embargo brought jojoba oil to the attention of industrial chemists, who regarded it as a potential petroleum substitute, or additive. Finally, advocates of alternative agriculture saw jojoba, which survives in the wild with little rainfall and no cultivation, as a crop for arid lands.

With these factors in its favor, jojoba was a prime candidate for investment, and the scramble was on to harvest as much wild jojoba as possible in Mexico and on the bajadas of central Arizona and southern California. Collection wasn't easy because the seed ripens in July and August when desert temperatures often rise above 115° F. Inevitably someone must have thought that "there's an easier way to do this," and the first commercial jojoba plantations were born.

By 1979 commercial plantings of 40 acres or more were in the ground in Arizona and southern California. One such plantation was Hyder Jojoba, Inc., in Hyder, Arizona, which planted its first acres in early 1980 and increased to 1,200 acres by 1987.

Hyder's owner, Carole Ann Whittaker, was a continuing education specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, until she caught jojoba fever from friends and associates. Remembering those days at the beginning of the decade, Whittaker shakes her head. "I wasn't a farmer, and neither

Was anyone else who started the jojoba industry," she says with some amusement. "If we had been, we'd never have planted jojoba at all." Farmers have known the basics of growing corn, wheat, and cotton for thou-sands of years. But Whittaker and other jojoba growers were attempting nothing less than the domestication of a wild plant in fewer than 10 years, instead of 10 to 100 centuries. "We didn't even know jojoba's water requirements," says Whittaker. "We started on the assumption that it needed less than an acre-foot of water, but now we know it must have three acre-feet per year for optimal growth." Plantation owners had to experiment with distance between rows and distance between plants. Initially they underestimated the extent to which the shrub would grow when irrigated and had to remove plants as they grew much larger than their wild relatives. Harvesting was the growers' biggest Headache. Jojoba, a perennial, matures slowly. When plantation harvesting began in 1982, plants were small and Hyder Jojoba used a modified raspberry picking machine, which rode over each row like an inverted letter U, beating the shrubs with metal or plastic wands to loosen the ripe seed. Soon the plants grew too large for this method, and the company switched to vacuum-like machines combined with blowers. Other growers, such as John Tryon of Desert Farm Management and Dale Van Boening of Western Jojoba, are working on new harvester designs. The plantations were more laborand capital-intensive than anyone ever dreamed. Investors, seeing no return for more years than they cared to contemplate, began to drop away. But the "jojoba nuts" hung on despite the problems and new challenges, such as frost and pests. Because the flower on the female plant is located on the outside edge of the shrub for pollen pick-up, it is susceptible to even mild frost. Growers have been hit hard by frost damage, even in Hyder Valley where frosts are few. Worse, bugs discovered the concentration of jojoba shrubs on the plantations. Grasshoppers have descended in huge numbers on Hyder Jojoba; Say's stinkbug infiltrated the fields around Tacna; and cutworms, thrips, and loopers have plagued all growers. Vicki Hubbard, president of Associated Jojoba group and the Jojoba Growers Association, says that insects and cold weather reduced by almost half the 198889 crop and further damaged the 1989-90

crop. "We applied for pest registration in

(LEFT) Raw jojoba oil seeps from a press at Jojoba Growers and Processors, Inc. in Apache Junction. Future uses for the waxy fluid may include the manufacture of lowcalorie food oil.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Harvesting jojoba today. Work continues to find the perfect machine: “a simple design, with readily available parts, minimal breakdowns, and good visibility,” says Dale Van Boening of Western Jojoba.

(BELOW) A sampling of products currently utilizing jojoba oil include band cleaners, transmission fluids, skin creams, and shampoos.

JOJOBA

seed sales and about $3.7 million in oil sales from the 1988-89 harvest, reports Brown, an oil chemist. He says jojoba oil is unique in that it is readily absorbed by the human skin and transported to layers under the epidermis, making it useful in pharmaceutical as well as cosmetic applications. If research proves that it is safe for human consumption, future uses may include a low-calorie food oil. Already an additive in automatic transmission fluids for reducing friction and metal wear, it also is being considered for use in detergents, protective coatings, and corrosion inhibitors.

Jojoba producers believe that the key to expanding jojoba production is genetics. Hal Purcell, a former ophthalmologist and head of Purcell Jojoba Company in Bouse, Arizona, breeds clones of highly productive female plants in greenhouses near Bouse. “We're trying to breed in frost and pest resistance,” he says, “and a good shape for harvesting, shorter seed-drop period, and higher oil content.” Many growers are removing seed-planted shrubs and replanting with cuttings. First-stage cutting plantations can produce 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of seed per acre, compared to 1,000 pounds from seedplanted shrubs. Jim Brown has written a research paper that says, “No fields have been abandoned that were initiated with clones.” Jojoba oil producers and the six to ten jojoba growers who have survived the financial crunch firmly believe in their crop and their product, though they admit they haven't saved the sperm whale (international commissions are doing that). Colonel William Boyce Thompson, speaking at the dedication of his arboretum in the early 1920s, said, “Find one plant that will add to the welfare, comfort, and happiness of the people of this less favored, sadly neglected region, and we will have done a great service.” In providing a viable crop for arid lands, jojoba growers have finally done that “great service” for Colonel Thompson.

Additional Reading

Jojoba: New Crop for Arid Lands, New Material for Industry, by the National Research Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1985.

"Jojoba: Answer to the Sperm Whale?" by Carl J. Verbanic. Chemical Business, August 1986: 30-32.

1988,” says Hubbard, “but even then some of us didn't spray, or else we didn't spray in time.” Jojoba farmers have not been locked into chemical treatment as the only solution to bugs, and have taken advantage of newer Integrated Pest Management techniques. IPM's repertoire includes insect growth regulators, biological controls (such as wasps that attack cutworm eggs), and mechanical techniques (such as cultivating field perimeters and cleaning out washes to deter stinkbugs), as well as insecticides.

Says Hubbard, “Using IPM is definitely to our advantage. We sell our oil to European cosmetics companies, which are careful about quality control. We want no chemical ical residues in the oil we send to them.” Despite the challenges, jojoba plantation acreage increased to 40,000 by 1985. Then, with diminishing capital investment and the realization that some land was too marginal for cost-effective production, acreage shrank to 25,000; today, 15,000 acres are productive and actively managed, and the remaining 10,000 are still in production but managed on a less active scale. Arizona growers produce about half the world's supply of jojoba seed and oil. California follows with 40 percent, and the rest is produced mainly in Mexico.

marginal for cost-effective production, acreage shrank to 25,000; today, 15,000 acres are productive and actively managed, and the remaining 10,000 are still in production but managed on a less active scale. Arizona growers produce about half the world's supply of jojoba seed and oil. California follows with 40 percent, and the rest is produced mainly in Mexico.

The 1989-90 seed crop produced less than the 1988-89 harvest (about 800 tons compared to 1,500 tons in 1988-89), according to James Brown, president of Jojoba Growers and Processors, Inc., of Apache Junction. As of early December, 1989, Brown and other processors had pressed about 625 tons of oil, as compared to the previous year's 675 tons. Ninety percent is bought by the cosmetics industry and 10 percent by specialty lubricant manufacturers.

Arizona growers grossed $2.5 million in