Final answer:
The SQL select statement 'SELECT MIN(product_description) FROM product' will return the minimum (alphabetical first) product description from the product table.
Step-by-step explanation:
The SQL SELECT MIN(product_description) statement will return the minimum value of the product_description column from the product table. This implies it will fetch the smallest value according to the default sorting order, which for text fields is usually alphabetical order. Therefore, the statement does not calculate a numerical minimum, but rather finds the alphabetic 'first' depending on the sorting rules of the text. For example, if the product descriptions are 'Table', 'Chair', and 'Desk', the statement will return 'Chair' as the minimum product description because 'Chair' comes first in alphabetical order.