Jojoba History

Jojoba History in a Nutshell

Over millions of years wild jojoba trees have adapted to only one place in the world, the extremely hot and dry Sonora Desert of North America. In the 1700s, Father Junipero Sierra, who established the missions in California, wrote in his diary that Native Americans used the rich material they pressed from jojoba seeds for its 'mystical" treatment of cuts, scrapes, sunburn and dried out skin.

In 1934 University of Arizona chemists discovered that jojoba was the only natural source of liquid wax esters, other than the sperm whale oil. They were amazed that jojoba oil contains a 98% pure array of monounsaturated liquid wax esters consisting of long chains of fatty acids and alcohols, whereas all other seed oils consist of branched triglyceride molecules.

In the 1960-70s more attention became focused on protecting our environment and on replacing our limited supply of petrochemicals with sustainable production of renewable resources. The sperm whale, whose spermacti oil is 85% esters, had long been used in hundreds of cosmetic and lubrication products until these whales became an endangered species and jojoba was rediscovered as a replacement.

Then in the 1970s and 80s, when 46,500 acres of commercially planted jojoba trees in the southwestern United States began producing a few hundred drums of Natural Jojoba seed extract, America's first new crop in over 100 years was born. Associations were formed, public and private research flourished, technologies and markets were developed, but much had to be learned by trial and error and most of those first jojoba pioneers failed. Since then, others have attempted to grow jojoba in more than 30 countries, but most of them have also failed.

Never-the-less, by 2005 the fledgling worldwide jojoba industry annually produced over 10,000 drums of Natural Jojoba extract. This exquisite ingredient is already used in a multitude of personal care products and as jojoba's unique functionality excites more new chemists, many more new products are being formulated with these elegant esters.

At Purcell Jojoba, we believe that as awareness of petrochemical shortages and related environmental challenges increases, jojoba utilization for many bio-based products will lead to a much larger jojoba industry in the near future. Growing more jojoba trees will help save precious desert water, help sustain farming in our rural communities and provide a new highly functional, non-petroleum lubricant.