Jatropha Gets a Champion in SG Biofuels

Jatropha, a plant with toxic berries, is on its way to becoming the world’s newest cash crop, if companies can figure out how to make its growing cycles as predictable as those of other crops. SG Biofuels wants to be at the forefront, establishing a gene library for jatropha and working to increase the plant’s yield and geographic range.

The prize is a plant that can be grown on marginal lands across the world to make biodiesel. Proponents of cellulosic ethanol say the plants they’ll use, from grasses to fast-growing trees, can also be planted on unused land. But biodiesel is far simpler (and cheaper) to make than cellulosic ethanol, so creating an ideal hybrid strain of jatropha could put the biodiesel industry back in the top spot it occupied several years ago.

SG Biofuels made its public debut in February, but chose to wait until yesterday to announce its “Genetic Resource Center” for the plant, which will collect gene samples from strains around the world (jatropha is primarily a Central American plant, but also grows naturally elsewhere). The center could help speed jatropha’s entry into the ranks of cultivated plants, a process that in the past has taken decades for other species. With luck, jatropha might only take a few years to tame.

If that’s successful, jatropha could offer a per acre payback an order of magnitude better than that of corn. Today the yield per acre for jatropha is supposedly creeping up into hundreds of gallons per acre, which is already significantly better.

Picking and processing jatropha’s berries still promises to be expensive in terms of labor, though, unless better mechanized techniques are invented. The growing list of countries looking at cultivating jatropha tends to reflect the desire for low labor costs and plenty of unused land: China, Haiti, India, Malaysia and Uganda, among others, have farm programs in various stages of completion.

And there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome for jatropha. Not all plants lend themselves to easy cultivation, so companies like SG Biofuels face an unpredictable development curve, while those planting the fields, like the Israeli outfit Galten, have to navigate the political atmospheres in developing countries. In India, there is already muttering over farmers being kicked off their land for new jatropha plantations, and there is concern over the toxic oil from the berries hurting other farms and wildlife. But these are all still small worries; for the moment, jatropha’s future still looks bright.