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."

Comments

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.

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...

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). 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.