Repository: UIHistories Project: SWE - Proceedings of the First International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists [PAGE 71]

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Underground storage in aquifers rather than in reservoirs and other evaporation control in general can aid in the salinity problem. The varying results with cetyl alcohol as an evaporation control on free water surfaces are far from being completely understood. The Australians report much better success than do we, and they believe that very small quantities of branched chain impurities undo the advantages of the cetyl alcohol film. In all areas, saline-tolerant crops would be highly advantageous. Thus, the development of salt-tolerant plants is receiving attention, but this mainly is concerned with the selection of existing crop plants for salt tolerance. But these plants are probably genetically limited, and only a highly improbably extraordinary mutation could give rise to varieties with more than marginal improvements in salt tolerance. Yet nature has bequeathed to us a group of higher plants representing some 50 or more species that live in the highly saline waters of salt marshes, where in some cases the salinity exceeds that of sea water. Certainly these plants possess the genetic material that can be used to "teach" more useful plants to tolerate salt. Amont these salt-tolerant plants, the halophytes, are grasses, sedges, composites, legumes and many others. Thus there should be possible numerous breeding experiments, yet I can find essentially no record of work on the breeding and very little even on the physiology of these plants which grow so robustly in the sale marshes of the world. This is a large, important, and virtually untouched field and this particularly knowledgeable D NA is a major resource of this planet. It seems to me that we (who know only how to use degraded solar energy) are naive indeed seriously to propose solar stills for desalinating water for agriculture when plants can carry out a conversion by sophisticated enzymes using solar energy at a high energy level. Some ordinary crop plants apparently can be raised on irrigations of sea water when this is supplied in very deep, extremely coarse soils. The mechanisms of this are by no means clear, but apparently involve evaporation and condensation within the interstices of the gravelly substratum. Understanding the manner in which biological systems handle water and salt may provide vital clues to many aspects of these problems. For example, it is probably that vastly superior osmotic membranes could result from biological investigations, or microorganisms can be developed to absorb salt, or produce cetyl alcohol. Fertilizers. Fertilizers and soil conditioners that are especially adapted to rain forest soils, together with engineering solutions to rain forest problems, could secure a food source for any foreseeable human need. No one has studied a vast (and monumental and politically appealing I) program to convey some substance (such as vermiculite) to the great laterite areas for the permanent improvement of humid soils and to obtain the immerse 11-10