Beans and Whales

For many years the Indians and early settlers of the American Southwest treasured the oil they pressed from the beans of the wild jojoba shrub. In Arizona and California the jojoba (pronounced ho-ho-bah) oil was used as a nostrum for almost every ill: to ease childbirth, as a remedy for cancer, even as a laxative. Spanish colonists liked to rub the waxy, colorless oil on their mustaches. Last week a panel of National Research Council scientists reported that the jojoba bean may also be a panacea for the endangered sperm whale.

The giant sea mammals (up to 60 ft. in length) are relentlessly hunted for the exceptionally fine oil that can be extracted from their tissue and head cavities. Sperm-whale oil and the waxy substance separated from it--spermaceti --are resistant to high temperatures and pressures, and have been used in such varied processes as coating paper and fabrics, manufacturing cosmetics, soaps and candles, cold-rolling steel and lubricating automatic car transmissions, watches and other precision machinery. In an effort to protect the world's dwindling population of sperm whales, in late 1970 the U.S. banned the importation of their oil. Even though other nations, notably the U.S.S.R. and Japan, continued to hunt the whales, the U.S. stockpile of the oil began to dwindle alarmingly, and manufacturers argued that there was no adequate substitute.

In fact, there was. In the 1930s, Robert A. Greene, a chemist at the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture, noted that there was a remarkable chemical similarity between jojoba-bean oil and that of the sperm whale. Other researchers confirmed his findings; the university's Office of Arid Lands Studies still publishes an occasional bulletin called Jojoba Happenings to promote cultivation of the bean. But until recently sperm-whale oil was still plentiful, and efforts to substitute jojoba oil did not attract much commercial enthusiasm.

Economic Boost. In its new report, the Washington panel laments that neglect. It emphasizes that jojoba-bean oil could "probably be used as a sperm oil substitute for the complete range of uses." Furthermore, the report notes that growing the dark, peanut-sized beans could provide an economic boost for the impoverished Indian reservations in the Southwest. The hardy, long-lived (up to 200 years) shrubs could readily be cultivated in desert land that has until now been almost totally unproductive. The panel conceded that the startup costs for a jojoba plantation would be high, but after the plants reach maturity in five years, they would begin to pay off handsomely, even as they were contributing to the salvation of the great sperm whale.

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