Tree for all conditions
Perfect Candidate for Toshki and Sinai

defeats: salinity, heat, drought
produces: gold
He was in a business trip to his home country Egypt. He is the American scientist of Egyptian origin, Dr. Mohammed Hamdi Khamis, specialist in desert plantations in California. Dr. Khamis talked about the golden tree, jojoba, and how much it is good for cultivation in Toshki and Sinai.

During the latest visit to Egypt, Khamis touched for himself the great progress in the fields of desert agriculture and also the ambitious projects for the southern parts of Egypt and Sinai.

Perfect choice
He therefore, felt it was necessary to shed light on one new industrial crop compatible to the nature of Egyptian desert and the circumstances of the forthcoming phase requiring expansion in cultivated area without exceeding the water quota. Hence the urge to plant crops which can sustain salinity, heat and second or third rating soil, but still generate profitable economic returns. This goes perfect and exactly for jojoba - the miracle tree.

The beginning
Interest grew in jojoba early 1970s when the endangered whale fishing was banned as the world ran short of the whale liver oil the sales of which hit 3 billion annually at the time. Jojoba turned to be a very good substitute and it seized the interest of both researchers and growers.

Merits
Jojoba, inter alia, has the following merits:
The seeds have a kind of liquid wax oil of rare characteristics and which has multiple usages.
The plant fights drought and bad climatic conditions.
Jojoba grows where other plants can't be planted.
It resists the salinity of the soil.
It doesn't need fertilizers.
It is rarely infected with diseases and insects.
It is an evergreen plant, lives for ages, and has rewarding financial returns.
The jojoba is a wild plant, growing a somewhat big shrub. It has been tamed recently and brought from its original habitat in Sonora desert, south, west the USA and the north west Mexico. The name of the plant is written jojoba in Latin, the Francophone pronounce it (jojoba), the Spanish (khokhoba), the Anglophone(Hohoba), but its common used name is (hohoba). The Red-Indians used jojoba oil as an ointment for hair, moisture for skin, cure to wounds and drug to facilitate women's delivery.
Endurance

Researches proved that jojoba endures the high and low temperatures of the desert that are usually changing. This plant also sustains dryness as it was found in some areas where the quantity of rain is less than 120m a year, and where the temperature reaches 46c, in shadow.

The cultivation of jojoba prospers in the moderate areas and where there is a wide difference between day and night in temperature. The ideal temperature for the growth of the jojoba plant is 20c-27c. Modern researches proved that jojoba can endure the high temperature up to 50c without harming the plant.

Jojoba should not be planted in areas that are exposed to frost waves (less than 5c). In 1990 a frost wave struck California, the temperature reached 10c, that wave lasted for 10 hours and caused the destruction of jojoba plants in vast areas. As a result, investors in America gave up planting jojoba.

Jojoba grows better in the places that are warm at day and cold at night. It is not advisable to plant jojoba in tropical zones where humidity rate is high. The jojoba originally grows in the deserts. It grows where other crops are difficult to be planted because of the water shortage.

Jojoba lives through drought especially when it grows old and strikes deep roots reaching to the waters, but in the first two years the plant needs about 300-350mm of rain throughout the year. It equals one third of the needs of water of clover, and half the needs of cotton.

There should be adequate water drainage system, because the water that gathers around the roots for a day or two kills the plant, so it is inadvisable to grow the plant in lands exposed to floods or that are badly drained. Cultivation also succeeds in the lands of thick soil, provided it is well drained, but there the plant grows slowly.

It is certain that it can't grow in the badly ventilated, badly drained lands. It was discovered that the jojoba sustains a wide range of the hydrogenic components in the soil (alkaline), nearly from 5 to 8. This means it can grow in the Egyptian desert which is nearly alkaline.

Jojoba plant sustains the salinity of water and soil to a great extent. A research presented at an international conference about the jojoba, held in Argentina 1994, goes that the plant stands the salinity of water under 10,000 parts per million, but without producing fruit, because fruitage is affected by the salinity that exceeds 3,000 parts per million.

Proliferation
Jojoba proliferates sexually by seeds and greenery by joints or by the transplantation of textures. Each of these ways has its advantages. Multiplication by seeds is very easy. Its growth rate amounts to 95%. The seeds grow within two weeks, if they were planted in sandy soil at 2-3 cm depth and a suitable temperature (21-35c), as they are planted directly.

Jojoba is planted in lines, each line is 3-4m away from the other, each plant is from 1 to 1.5m away from the other, an acre contains from 600 to 1000 shrubs. It is better to grow a number of seeds at the place that will be cultivated, to give chance for a few shrubs to grow.

In the second or the third year when the plant blossoms, we leave the female plants and remove the masculine. We leave only 10% of the masculine plants to produce the pollen seeds. The advantages of the proliferation are:


The plants are identical and have exactly the same qualities of the mother.
The crop increases, and the production appears a year or more earlier.
The sex of the plants is known without waiting till they blossom.
We can plant the proportion which we want of the female or the masculine plants in the most suitable place.

The proliferation by joints became the most common way for the commercial production, the joints of the stalk are used, its success amounts to more than 95%. A transplant needs about 3 or 4 months to be ready for plantation. Jojoba oil has many natural qualities of great industrial importance.

Neim…Magic Tree

Some studies and researches conducted on the Neim tree, its leaves and seeds, point out that the Neim tree kills seven kinds of snails living in river water, including the infectious phase of Bilharzia, that is known as sarkaria and also the liver worm.

These researches were done by the department of parasites and plant protection at the Zagazig University. The studies proved that the liquefied extract of the Neim seeds is detrimental to 100% of the snails within 48 hours.

Dr. Ibrahim El-Kilani, the professor of plant protection at the Zagazig University, made clear that the researches made by a team consisting of veterinary doctors, to study the effect of this tree under the Egyptian circumstances, proved the ability of the meat of these seeds and the oil extracted, to protect the seeds of the French beans from the insect infection.

The Neim tree, he said, grows naturally in many places…, and it was planted in many places all over the world, such as Saudi Arabia, because it expels the flying insects such as mosquitoes and the flies multiply, especially, it doesn't need a special technology to plant, as it is planted by one transplant, or a number of transplants at any kind of land. He referred to its role in fertilizing the soil, and resisting the soil blights, such as the black beetles, the nematode of roots, and the ground digger, by a certain smell from its roots