A review on date palm tree: Properties, characterization and its potential applications

Abstract

Date palm (phoenix dactylifera), which is mostly found in the middle east countries such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United States (California) that play a significant role in the economical and the environmental condition in those areas. The main purpose of planting dates is its fruit, which is consumed as fresh, dried or processed forms. There are approximately 100 million date palm trees in the worldwide that 62 million of these trees located in the Middle East and North Africa. In Saudi Arabia only, 15000 tons of date palm leaves is prepared as waste materials. The leaves of date palm tree are used in several applications such as making ropes, baskets, and mats in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, the huge amount of the non-food products from the date palm remains as landfill materials without any specific usage. By attention to the date palm properties, the literature clearly showed that each part of date palm has great potential to be used for a variety of applications such as: making paper, absorption of heavy and toxic metals, energy production and soil fertilizing. Some of the obstacles and solutions for using palm date in these applications were also explored. Considering these issues and their solutions, the date palm is a favorable alternative. Despite some limited and traditional uses of these palm wastes, this review considered date palm applications and the properties’ of the most important part of that tree in recent researches and related issues for future research are also spotted.