Jatropha curcas: A ten year story from hope to despair

Abstract

The story of Jatropha curcas (Jatropha) was started in 2003 when the Planning Commission of India decided 20% blending of Jatropha oil (biodiesel) in petroleum diesel by 2010 and 30% by the year 2030. After that China, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Tanzania, Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and East and South Africa have set their own plans to blend Jatropha oil in petroleum diesel. It is not unexpected that almost every paper about Jatropha starts its introduction with the energy, environment and economic benefits and wishful thinking of reducing global warming. Unfortunately, Jatropha could not succeed so far in energy sector as expected, for which it was the most popularized energy crop. Many of the actual investments and policy decisions on Jatropha have convincingly been made without any scientific and technological backup. It has become clear that the positive claims on Jatropha are numerous which have popularized it as a potential source in biodiesel production but many of them still remain as theoretical assumptions and have not been verified yet practically. This letter reports briefly the status of past hopes to ground reality on the basis of what a few scientific studies on Jatropha.