The Innovative Perspective of Arid Land Agriculture: Essential Oil-Bearing Plants As Factories for a Healthy and Sustainable Future.

Dealing with the agricultural systems located in the arid regions was always a challenging and critical topic. The reason behind is the harsh environmental conditions and the severe limitation in the availability of the natural resources, such as, water and nutrients. However, these arid conditions are the perfect place of birth for extraordinary natural factories, from plant species, having high capabilities to adapt and survive such severe situations, through the production of expensive phytochemicals. Essential oils are volatile organic compounds, consisting mainly from terpenes, oxygenated terpenes, sesquiterpenes and oxygenated sesquiterpenes, which are produced from specific plant species as secondary metabolites, acting as defense chemicals. Recently, huge attention has been given to such valuable natural resource, which has wide range of industrial applications (e.g. pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic, fragrance and pesticides), and thus has huge economical rewards. The main purpose of this work, is to highlight a new innovative vision for dealing with the arid lands, as sustainable biomedical factories. Also, to represent the main three reasons, that will attract the attention of the decision makers and the whole community, to focus on essential oil-bearing plant species. This will be done, based on representing the sustainability triangle, including the environmental, economical and social perspectives. In addition, the work will provide a case study for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) country, which are located in the arid region of the world, and declaring the first exclusive data for all essential oil-bearing plants indigenous to the UAE.