Any food crops that could grow in a desert provided that they get fertilizer and water I am working on an idea to provide nearly unlimited amounts of water in desert regions. To make this commercially viable. I would use the water to irrigate desert sand and grow crops. Given my extremely limited understanding of biology, I cannot find an answer to the following question: Are there any food crops (preferably high valuable/low maintenance ones), that can grow in a desert, given that I can just provide the seed, water and fertilizer and stop sandstorms. My motivation for investigating this is the following map showing regions that are either already deserts or at risk of becoming deserts: !enter image description here Source: <

Even if you have unlimited water available to the plants you'd still have to worry about the high temperatures and light levels of these areas. In the hot periods I would look into any plant that uses c4 carbon fixation like millet, sorghum, corn, sugar cane... In the cooler periods maybe look into rotating to a cool season legume crop like the cowpea that would help fix nitrogen. Another really important thing to do would be to find cover crops that will hold down the soil and build up some life in the otherwise sterile sands of the desert.