About 30 percent was soybean oil for use in plastics and resins (either as epoxidized oils or as dimer acids for polyamide resins), textile lubricants, and other specialty applications. A considerable proportion of the 60 million pounds of animal fats and vegetable oils used a year as plasticizers those agents that make plastics soft and flexible is soybean oil.

Castor oil, about 10 percent of the total, is an ingredient of lubricants, plasticizers, and waxes. It also is a source of sebacic acid used to make synthetic fibers, lubricants for jet engines, and plastics.

Cottonseed, linseed, and palm oil supplied the remaining 25 percent of the domestic market.

Oilseed proteins, obtained as the cake or meal after removal of oil, are used mainly in feeds. Soybean, cottonseed, linseed, and peanut oil meals total between to million and 12 million tons. Soybean meal makes up more than 60 percent of all the oilseed meals fed.

Industrial uses for oilseed proteins are limited mainly to soybean proteins. About 95 million pounds of soybean meal, which contains 40 to 50 percent protein, were used to make plywood glue in 1959. Some 50 million pounds of isolated soybean protein are used each year for adhesives, mainly as binder for clay coatings on high-quality paper, and for emulsifiers. Soybean protein is a constituent of firefighting foams.

SEVERAL OTHER seed crops are grown in the United States, primarily for food. They are leguminous seeds and tree nuts. They provide a considerable variety of staple foods and special food values.

About 750 thousand tons of dry edible beans are grown annually, including white navy, red kidney, mottled pinto, and lima beans and edible soybeans and mung beans.

Mung bean seeds and sometimes the seeds of other beans are germinated in large masses in special vessels and allowed to form sprouts up to about 3 inches long in the dark. The sprouts make a succulent, nutritious food that is high in vitamin content.

Green beans generally are eaten without removing the seed pod. Immature or green seeds of peas are also eaten as vegetables. Split peas, popular in this country for making soup, consist of the mature cotyledons only. The annual consumption of dry peas is about 150 thousand tons.

The yield of tree nuts in the United States in 1960 was about 190 thousand tons, in-the-shell basis, of almonds, filberts, walnuts, and pecans. About the same amount of tree nuts was imported. The per capita consumption of shelled nuts was about 1.5 pounds in 1960.

AMERICAN AGRICULTURE currently produces a surplus of cereal grains. New seed crops are sought as alternative sources of income for the American farmer.

Safflower has potentialities as a new crop. Centuries ago the Middle East knew about safflower. Its yellow and orange florets were sources of dyes. Safflower has been a profitable crop in the Central Valley of California since 1956, and its production in the Great Plains States has increased substantially. Edible safflower oil is an outstanding source of unsaturated fats. Increasing amounts of safflower oil are used in exterior house paints and interior finishes because it retains color well.

The canarygrasses are a new crop of interest to farmers in the Northwest. The seed of Phalaris canariensis has long been used as canary bird feed. Imports run about 20 thousand tons.

Idaho grows rapeseed and North Dakota produces millet for birdseed mixtures. A carload of birdseed, it is said, would be required daily for an estimated 7 million parakeets and "budgies" in New York City alone. Sunflower seed is a health food, an hors d'oeuvre, and a source of edible oil. It also is a popular feed for parrots and wild birds at outdoor feeders.

Man through the ages has sampled and screened plants for useful products. Botanists know about 250 thousand species of higher plants. Some 15 thousand are native to North America, but only 100 produce economic crops in the United States that is, each has an annual value exceeding a million dollars. Seed crops made up 70 percent of the total acreage in 1958 and 57 percent of the total crop value.

The Agricultural Research Service in 1956 began a coordinated and greatly expanded research program with State agricultural experiment stations to find crops, particularly seed crops, that will be profitable for the farmer to grow and will permit him to diversify his agricultural program and will satisfy present or anticipated industrial needs crops that may supply strategic or critical raw materials and replace nonrenewable resources.

In this search, seeds yielding new raw materials for industrial markets hold most promise. Although very young, the new crops program has developed a number of leads, particularly in the field of oilseeds, that appear encouraging.

More and more we realize that seeds of the plant kingdom contain many unexplored and potentially useful chemical raw materials.

Modern scientific tools and knowledge permit us to probe deeper into the composition of plants. Changing industrial needs and an expanding economy mean markets for new and different raw materials.

The future is bright for greater uses of the world's seed crops and for the development of new ones with compositions and growth characteristics that will make them profitable for the farmer to grow and for industry to process.

FREDERIC R. SENTI, Director of the Northern Utilization Research and Development Division, Agricultural Research Service, Peoria, Ill., since 1959, has spent more than 20 years conducting research on agricultural products. Dr. Senti, whose graduate degrees are from Kansas State and The Johns Hopkins Universities, received a Superior Service Award in 1956 for his contributions on properties of seed grains and oilseeds and their industrial uses. Many analytical techniques and scientific principles now being applied in a search for new, industrially useful materials through chemical and microbiological transformation of cereal grains, oilseeds, and unusual plant seeds, or their constituents, were developed under his guidance.

W. DAYTON MACLAY, Assistant Administrator of Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, Washington, D.C., obtained his doctor's degree in 1932 in organic chemistry at the University of Nebraska. Before serving as Director of the Northern Utilization Research and Development Division from 1954-1959, he worked at the Western Division, the Pacific coast counterpart of the Peoria laboratory, as head of sections responsible for research programs on sugarbeets, alfalfa, wheat, and rice for an 11-State area. His research work has led to publication of 75 scientific papers and numerous patents.