Salt From Plants

Makarand writes "Researchers in India have been able to extract salt from a plant source for the first time. The plant salt comes from a salt-loving leafless shrub, salicornia brachaita, that grows under high-salt conditions accumulating salt in its tissues. This plant's cultivation was being studied as a possible solution to reclaiming salty soil along coastal areas. While regular sea salt is predominantly NaCl, this plant salt has salts of potassium, calcium, magnesium and also nutrients like iron and hence could be marketed as a health salt."

mmm...

[ddd2k]

a salt-loving leafless shrub
you mean a potato?

Health salts?

[Viqsi]

Out of curiosity, what is a "health salt"? I've never heard of such before...

(oh, and for some reason, this keeps coming to mind: http://www.angryflower.com/nacl.gif [angryflower.com].)

Re:Health salts?

[cperciva]

Out of curiosity, what is a "health salt"?

You might have heard of it under a different name: Snake oil.

Re:Health salts?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding.

While regular sea salt is predominantly NaCl, this plant salt has salts of potassium, calcium, magnesium and also nutrients like iron.

That's very misleading, since regular sea salt contains a healthy amount of all those nutrients. Rock salt doesn't have much of these trace minerals and doesn't taste as good either.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Health salts?

[Somnus]

Out of curiosity, what is a "health salt"? I've never heard of such before...

I think they made it up ... whatever cruft tastes salty and dissolves in cooking, but contains other useful micronutrients.

Re:Health salts?

[sohp]

Salt that doesn't give you hypertension. Duh.

Re:Health salts?

[js7a]

what is a "health salt"?

Potassium is a common dietary supplement in areas where people have to do hard physical labor under the heat of the sun, and potassium sources such as bananas are difficult to come by.

Calcium and Magnesium [bovik.org] are more complicated, but much more important.

Re:Health salts?

[Austenite]

One type salt = Bad

Many type of salts = Good

Ergo:

One alcohol type = Bad
Lager, Pilsener, Stout, Scotch and Gin = Good.

Honest, officer.

Re:Health salts?

[Tower]

One Bourbon, one Scotch, one Beer. [bieresetmonde.com] = Even Better

Re:Health salts?

[spaten-optimator]

Well... there are "health sodiums." Which I guess isn't the same as salt. Anyhow... Sodium Naproxen is the major (only?) ingredient in the "Aleve" painkiller. Something to keep in mind if you're trying to reduce sodium in your diet.

Re:Health salts?

[Rob Simpson]

Yeah, cause the 20mg of Na+ (out of 220mg) is really going to make a difference. That's a little less than you'd get from a single potato chip.

RTFA

[zatz]

"Our interest in salicorni cultivation was mainly to reclaim salty soil."

Re:RTFA

[QuMa]

you grow the plant on the soil, extract the salt, put the remains back on the soil. Repeat, preferrably rotating crop. End result: A bag of salt and some fertile ground.

Re:Wow

[Smidge204]

It's not so much new ways to get salt. (Not withstanding the fact that this isn't "table salt" to begin with...) It's a way to remove salt from the soil that would otherwise prevent more useful crops from growing there. Ever hear the expression "Salting the earth"? That's one thing waring tribes did to eachother's land... because you can't grow crops in salty dirt! (If you don't believe me, try watering your houseplants with seawater)

This reminds me a lot of the mineral absorbing plants [slashdot.org] talked about here a long while ago.

As for what you might actually use the potassium, calcium and magnesium salts for isn't really an issue. I have no idea where or if these chemicals are used for anything, and you're right: there's probably easier ways to get them if they are.
=Smidge=

Re:Wow

[GigsVT]

But the story isn't about reclaiming the ground with the plants, the story is about how they have a new (patented) way to extract salts from the plants, and about selling the salt to offset the cost.

My point is, there's very little money in selling salt.

Re:Wow

[sketerpot]

Then the story was written by people who didn't bother to think first. You're right; any plan to sell the salt for a profit will fail. Even if the ideas of using this as a salt production method are used and fail, somebody will probably use this as a way of reclaiming soil and selling the salt to defray the costs. Therefore, it's nice to think about. And who knows, there may be something to the "health salt" ploy. With enough advertising, perhaps people would be dumb enough to fall for it....

Re:Wow

[Smidge204]

The article said they were primerily looking for a crop that would extract salts from the soil to make it habitable for planting food and other money producing crops. It said they filed for a patent on the process for extracing the salt form the plants. Nowhere did it say they plant to make "salt farms" and try to make money selling the salt they could extract with their newly developed process.

It said they expect the total cost of the "vegitable salt" to be around 10-12 Rupees per Kilogram... which works out to about 10 cents (american) per pound, give or take a penny.

I don't know what the price of refined salt is in India, but I'm guessing that won't be very competative. The only way they're going to sell it at that price is by marketing it as a dietary supplement.

They DO mention, however, that the plants provide an edible oil from thier seeds, so I'm sure the intention here is more like: "Hey look, one more thing we can sell to make desalinating land more worthwhile!" (As if gaining usable farmland from wasted fields wasn't good enough, but I dunno what their situation is)
=Smidge=

Re:Wow

[PhilHibbs]

Ever hear the expression "Salting the earth"? That's one thing waring tribes did to eachother's land... because you can't grow crops in salty dirt!

Not just tribes, but nations. We salted the fields of France only a few hundred years ago. And salt was expensive then, but they didn't appreciate it, oh no.

Re:Wow

[encebollado]

I agree with you that desalinization of the ground is a great application. But, if that't the only point of the article, why go to the trouble of extracting the salt from the plant?

Re:Wow

[n9hmg]

The thing I don't get is how this is claimed to be the first time this is done. Years ago, on a biology class field trip in southern Indiana (USA), a teacher pointed out a plant that took up salt from the soil, and said that the pioneers used to use it as a seasoning, and would sometimes toast (open burning would leave NaO instead of NaCl) it to ashes and leach the salt out of the ash for winter use.
That said, it's still pretty cool that there's a plant that grows in heavily saline soil and can be used to

Re:Wow

[zogger]

--it's the totality of the process, and the potential. First, this is India, any job is a good job there,and right now that's a lot of wasted space that could be farmed. After the salt sucker plants are used for enough seasons, it's back to normal farming with the reclaimed land. The plants produce a salt with micronutrients that could be packaged as a "seasoning salt" in the spices section of the grocery store, or perhaps put into capsules with some other stuff as a dietary supplement, again, useful. The p

Re:Wow

[GigsVT]

The article said the oil was edible.

Re:Wow

[zogger]

ahh, missed it then. Read it, musta forgot or didn't see it, remembered "oil" though.. Many dozens of articles a day, I read off of 6 to 12 sites,not just slashdot, man, I LIKE tabbed browsing. thankee. there ya go then, another product for them. Of course edible doesn't always mean *tasty*.....

Imagine back in the days of Timbuktu (An Moho!)

[derdesh]

When salt was traded for gold and the Soninke ruled the Ghana empire [metmuseum.org].

Bless your ignorance ...

[Ex-MislTech]

http://www.akzonobelsalt.com/english/abo/prf/home. htm

AKZO is one of the largest salt producers in the world,
they make millions off their premium salt used
in medicine, dyes for clothes, and many things you
would not expect .

At one time they were the largest producer in the world .

Peace
Ex-MislTech

Re:Why, Oh Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the reject your stories because you abuse the caps lock.

Re:Why, Oh Why?

[SuperBanana]

...Do MUY ESTUPIDA stories like this one get posted, but truly fascinating stories, like the NEW SPECIES OF GIANT JELLYFISH [discovery.com] and the NEW SPECIES OF TINY SEAHORSES [sciencedaily.com] get rejected?

(one reply)Maybe the reject your stories because you abuse the caps lock.

Nah. It's actually a secret conspiracy against abnormally sized critters by slashdot editors. Besides- giant jellyfish? Naaaasty- not to mention, if they didn't exist, I wouldn't have had to read that boring-as-watching-

Re:Why, Oh Why?

[yanestra]

Because they are from the same department like the headlines:

NEW SPECIES OF TROLLS FOUND IN HIMALAYA
or
LOUSY NEWS SOURCE DISCOVERED - SIX COCKROACHES DIED

Re:Or mix salts.

[DjReagan]

yep. but it wouldn't remove the salt from the soil, which is a much more useful reason for having these plants.

Salt bush?

[srn_test]

There's an Australian plant called Salt Bush that does this - the leaves actually have salt crystals on them.

They can be used to reclaim over-irrigated soil...

Re:Salt bush?

[HorsePunchKid]

From the article:

"Our interest in salicorni cultivation was mainly to reclaim salty soil," said JB Pandya, coordinator of the project. India has around eight to 10 million hectares of salt-affected soils of which Gujarat's share is nearly 25 per cent.

The article also mentions that the plant they're using is a "leafless shrub". I don't think they're exactly the same plant, though. The "salt bush" is apparently Atriplex halimus (or at least something in that genus, anyway), whereas these guys are dealing

Bioremediation is groovy.

[Bowling Moses]

There's lots of cool stuff going on right now with bioremediation. My roomate's looking for a postdoc position and one of the labs he was looking at was using bacteria to gather up heavy metals. It was pretty slick: the bacteria were engineered to express proteins designed to bind metal ions on their cell surfaces. They'd eventually have so much metal bound that they would begin to fall to the bottom of your sludge pond or whatever your body of contaminated water was in and they could be harvested. For at least one metal (Mercury? Cadmium? Gonna hafta ask him.) it was looking like the settled-out engineered bacterium-laden sludge from a contaminated site was more enriched in the metal than mined ore!

Re:Bioremediation is groovy. - Gold?

[Big_Breaker]

Since gold is a "noble" metal I imagine it would be hard to craft a protein that could bind to it.

Try this plant...

[BladeMelbourne]

They should try to extract salt out of the plant "lucern". This plant grows well in salty soil, and is used to combat soil salinity here in Australia.

Apparently cows eat it too :-)

Re:Try this plant...

[RNLockwood]

In the USA it's called alfalfa.

Potassium

[barakn]

The word potassium is derived from the word potash, literally meaning "pot ashes". The word alkali comes from the Arabic qalay, "to fry or roast in a pan", and al-qalay , "the substance that had been roasted." The English word soda is derived from suwwad, the Arabic name of a plant of which the ashes are rich in sodium carbonate (paraphrasing from the bottom of this reference [yale.edu]). This most recent effort is most certainly not the first time salt has been extracted from plants, and in fact is such an ancient practice that it has given rise to the names of some of the alkali metals.

Re:Potassium

[HorsePunchKid]

I think the interesting thing is that they have a plant now that collects salt in its seeds, which perhaps is new (I honestly don't know). The distinction, of course, is that one could harvest the seeds without necessarily destroying the entire plant. Further, the seeds may have significantly more salt per volume or be substantially easier to extract salt from than, for example, reducing the plant to ashes. Pity the article doesn't provide comparisons to other methods or any explanation of why this is inter

"... could be marketed as a health salt...."

[wowbagger]

I could remove the salt from my own urine and market it as a "health salt" - the health food industry is one of the biggest scams out there.

All I have to do is make a few vague claims, and dream up some useful obfuscation ("... extracted from the very life process that it is intended to promote, our exclusive uri-salt promotes healthy kidneys....") and I'm rolling in money.

Re:"... could be marketed as a health salt...."

[Alsee]

Chuckle.

Just the other day I saw a gift someone sent my mother. A package of Dead Sea Mineral Mud. You can buy it here, [freshskincare.com] $22.50 for an 8.5 ounce package, plus shipping.

Or you can get it here [beautydoor.com] for $6.25, plus shipping. Chuckle.

I started laughing hystericly when I saw it. It's a freaking bag of MUD! And the Dead Sea is called the DEAD sea for a reason. Nothing can live in it.

It makes me think I should go into bussiness selling Love Canal Mineral Mud. (For those who aren't familiar with Love Canal, [buffalo.edu] it is the

add "health salt"

[etn991]

to the list of useless oxymorons, which I guess is an oxymoron itself.

Really useful

[Cackmobile]

THis would be really welcome in Oz, where something ridiculous like 45% of arable land is affected by rising salt. And it would give the farmers an alternative source of income while there land is regenerating. Win - Win

Buy it in Tempe, AZ

[ecloud]

You can buy fresh salicornia at Gentle Strength, a bit west of ASU. It is really quite salty. They suggest adding it to salads, etc.

(Disclaimer: I don't work there)

What to do with all the salt

[ecloud]

The thing is, if this plant extracts all salts from the soil, then there's no particular reason that the salt from the plant will be particularly healthy; there will be sodium chloride, some other stuff that might be healthy, and perhaps also some salts which aren't. Which salts accumulate from chemical fertilizer use? Probably something other than sodium chloride, right?

Maybe the thing to do when reclaiming tracts of farmland is to gather up all the salicornia and throw it in the ocean; this is nature's

Re:What to do with all the salt

[Gordonjcp]

Hang on a minute! If you say that dumping Salicornia bushes at sea *won't* harm the environment, how will putting it into the sewers (where it will, eventually, find its way to the sea) be harmful to the environment?