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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "wonder" biofuel. A simple shrubby tree native to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on abject lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields resulted in plantation failures almost all over. The consequences of the jatropha crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, depends on cracking the yield issue and attending to the harmful land-use problems linked with its original failure.

The sole staying big jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been achieved and a brand-new boom is at hand. But even if this return falters, the world's experience of jatropha holds crucial lessons for any appealing up-and-coming biofuel.


At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted across the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its guarantee as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on broken down, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields fell flat.

Now, after years of research study and advancement, the sole staying big plantation concentrated on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha return is on.

"All those business that stopped working, embraced a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to advertise it, you need to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed [throughout the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the errors of jatropha's past failures, he says the oily plant could yet play an essential function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transport carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha likewise a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are hesitant, noting that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach full potential, then it is important to gain from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not just by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts likewise suggest that jatropha's tale uses lessons for scientists and entrepreneurs checking out promising new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal stemmed from its promise as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from grasses, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple purported virtues was an ability to prosper on degraded or "marginal" lands; hence, it was claimed it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all the boxes, states Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Future Initiatives. "We had a crop that appeared incredible; that can grow without too much fertilizer, too many pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not complete with food because it is harmful."

Governments, international firms, investors and companies purchased into the buzz, releasing efforts to plant, or promise to plant, millions of hectares of jatropha. By 2008, plantations covered some 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) in Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to a market study prepared for WWF.

It didn't take wish for the mirage of the amazing biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) cautioned that jatropha's high needs for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international review kept in mind that "growing exceeded both clinical understanding of the crop's potential in addition to an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can prosper on limited lands."

Projections estimated 4.7 million hectares (11.7 million acres) would be planted by 2010, and 12.8 million hectares (31.6 million acres) by 2015. However, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as anticipated yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure drought conditions, as claimed, but yields remained bad.

"In my opinion, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and potential to grow under relatively poorer conditions, developed an extremely huge issue," resulting in "ignored yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by ecological, social and financial troubles, say specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies found that land-use modification for jatropha in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and "in some scenarios, the carbon financial obligation may never be recovered." In India, production revealed carbon advantages, but making use of fertilizers led to increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."

"If you take a look at most of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was situated on marginal land, however the concept of minimal land is extremely evasive," describes Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha curcas plantations in the country over numerous years, and found that a lax meaning of "marginal" implied that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying unblemished and unused was typically illusory.

"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The truth that ... currently nobody is utilizing [land] for farming doesn't suggest that nobody is using it [for other purposes] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not always see from satellite imagery."

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say analysts, which must be followed when thinking about other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

"There was a boom [in financial investment], however sadly not of research study, and action was taken based upon supposed advantages of jatropha," says Bart Muys, a professor in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha buzz was winding down, Muys and coworkers released a paper citing crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for upfront research study might be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for instance, his group launched a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types" with biofuel promise.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys's research study revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that "pongamia still can not be considered a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting understanding gaps." Use of such cautionary information might prevent inefficient monetary speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.

"There are other very promising trees or plants that could serve as a fuel or a biomass producer," Muys states. "We wished to prevent [them going] in the very same direction of premature hype and stop working, like jatropha."

Gasparatos highlights essential requirements that must be satisfied before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market needs to be readily available.

"Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown," Gasparatos says. Jatropha "was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange."

How biofuel lands are obtained is also crucial, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities should guarantee that "guidelines are put in location to check how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease some of the issues we observed."

A jatropha return?

Despite all these challenges, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha might be a valuable biofuel solution - especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "responsible for roughly one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."

"I think jatropha has some possible, but it requires to be the best product, grown in the right place, and so on," Muys stated.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Qatar's Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha. He sees it as a way that Qatar may lower airline company carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its use as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% reduction of "cradle to tomb" emissions.

Alherbawi's team is performing ongoing field studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added advantage, he envisages a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The execution of the green belt can actually boost the soil and agricultural lands, and protect them against any further degeneration brought on by dust storms," he says.

But the Qatar job's success still depends upon many factors, not least the capability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another important step, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes the entirety of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.

Back in Ghana, jOil is currently handling more than 1,300 hectares (1,830 acres) of jatropha, and growing a pilot plot on 300 hectares (740 acres) dealing with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research and development have led to ranges of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.

"We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and improve the fruit-bearing capability of the tree," Subramanian says. In essence, he mentions, the tree is now domesticated. "Our very first job is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares."

Biofuels aren't the only application JOil is taking a look at. The fruit and its by-products could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal substitute (important in Africa where much wood is still burned for cooking), and even bioplastics.

But it is the transportation sector that still beckons as the ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. "The biofuels story has actually when again reopened with the energy transition drive for oil companies and bio-refiners - [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly."

A complete jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be completed, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be "competitive ... These 2 aspects - that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration - makes it an extremely strong candidate for adoption for ... sustainable air travel," he says. "Our company believe any such growth will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of abject land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way endangering food security of any country."

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, environment-friendly and socially accountable depends upon complex factors, including where and how it's grown - whether, for instance, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state specialists. Then there's the irritating issue of attaining high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian federal government announced its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels push that has actually stirred dispute over prospective repercussions. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is already in deep trouble, having been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many previous plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which ended up being bothersome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was frequently unfavorable in many of the jatropha websites, due to the fact that the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he describes.

Other researchers chronicle the "potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists stay skeptical of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly becomes so effective, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification," states Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually carried out research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use issues related to expansion of numerous crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our police is so weak that it can not deal with the personal sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of developing environmental problems."

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages might be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays worried about prospective environmental costs.

He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that dominates land," growing it just in genuinely bad soils in requirement of restoration. "Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in very sterile wastelands," he discusses. "That's the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest recovery method for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are higher than the prospective benefits."

Jatropha's international future remains unpredictable. And its potential as a tool in the battle against environment change can only be opened, state lots of specialists, by avoiding the list of problems connected with its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is "imminent" and that the resurgence is on. "We have strong interest from the energy market now," he states, "to collaborate with us to develop and broaden the supply chain of jatropha."

Banner image: Jatropha curcas trees in Hawai'i. Image by Forest and Kim Starr through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts

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