Sawdust, rice bran to fight drought

Moroccan inventor Abdeslam Benghazi has developed a new process to retain water on farmland, using sawdust and rice ban.

The technique, set to revolutionize the agriculture sector as it fights drought and spares water, consists in sowing a mixture of sawdust and rice bran in arable land.

The mixture retains water for about eight months and avoids its infiltration underground, the inventor told MAP.

If this process is used, Moroccan framers will no longer dread the months of March and April, where rainfalls are most expected. The water retained on farmland will palliate the contingency of rain scarcity, he said.

Benghazi said his invention, registered at the Moroccan intellectual property Board, is inspired from Chinese and Scandinavian techniques, the Chinese using rice ban, and the Scandinavian using sawdust.

Benghazi has won awards at several world invention forums for his culinary inventions, mainly his oat-couscous and barley-couscous that regulate cholesterol rates and his rice-couscous that is already marketed in Morocco as well as in France, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia.

The young inventor is now exploring another branch, that of cosmetics. He is conducting research on products to stop hair thinning and baldness and combat wrinkles.