Berber woman making argan oil in Marrakech

I met this Berber woman in one of the side streets of the Medina in Marrakech making argan oil.



It is used in Moroccan cooking and is now found to have all sorts of extra benefits from helping with diabetes to removing "the wrinkle".


There are a number of women's co-operatives in Morocco specialising in making argan oil products and we visited one up in the Atlas mountains.

Argan oil is an oil produced from the kernels of the argan tree, endemic to Morocco, that is valued for its nutritive, cosmetic and numerous medicinal properties. The tree, a relic species from the Tertiary age, is extremely well adapted to drought and other environmentally difficult conditions of southwestern Morocco.


It remains one of the rarest oils in the world due to the small and very specific growing areas.
Argan trees were first reported by the explorer Leo Africanus in 1510.