New Fruits for Arid Climates

INTRODUCTION In many countries around the world “developers” take the best agricultural lands for housing, and urbanization spreads rapidly. As a result, the agricultural industries are pushed into less productive lands in which the climate is not the most suitable for crops. A very good example is found in Israel. The best agricultural area is along the Mediterranean coast where the citrus industry flourished for almost a century and is the area where the famous ‘Shamouti’ (syn. Jaffa) orange was found and developed. Later, “Jaffa” became the trade name for the whole successful Israeli citrus industry. Today, most of this area is heavily populated and the agricultural industry is pushed into the Negev Desert where extreme temperatures exist, the soil is less fertile, and water, if available, is saline and/or very expensive. Labor is also less available and very expensive. The government by doing “more of the same” is encouraging the reestablishment of the citrus industry in the Negev and planting olives for oil (Negev of Growth Campaign). Traditional crops in Israel appear to be at the end of their viable economic-life-cycle, but there is hope that new crops could establish a future profitable agricultural industry (Mizrahi and Nerd 1996). New crops could also ameliorate the increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration (greenhouse effect) which increases temperature and drought, changing fertile lands into deserts (Mizrahi and Nerd 1996). The old traditional crops cannot cope with these expected changes. Over a decade ago Noel Vietmeyer (1986, 1990) raised the point that humans are “stupid” to neglect the huge treasure-house of biodiversity available in the thousands of wild plants and neglected crops that might solve many of our present and future agricultural problems. The aim of our program that started 16 years ago was to develop totally new fruit crops not known in the world markets, as new crops for desert areas (Nerd et al. 1990, 1993; Mizrahi and Nerd 1996, 1999). After many years of extensive R&D we had both failures and successes and we wish to share our experiences with others interested in new crops.