The extraordinary collapse of Jatropha as a global biofuel.

B of fossil diesel with biodiesel is an important climate change mitigation strategy across the world. In 2003 the Planning Commission of India decided to introduce mandatory blending over increasingly larger parts of the country and reach countrywide 30% blending status by the year 2020 and opted for nonedible oilseed species of Jatropha curcus raised over lands unsuited to agriculture as it was considered to be high in oil content, early yielding, nonbrowsable and requiring little irrigation and even less management. In a massive planting program of unprecedented scale millions of marginal farmers and landless people were encouraged to plant Jatropha across India through attractive schemes. In 2006 China also decided to meet 15% of transportation energy needs with biofuels by 2020 and, spurred by India’s example, leaned on Jatropha curcas with ambitious plans to raise it over 1 million hectare of marginal lands. Similar measures were undertaken across other developing countries involving millions of small farmers in the hope that it would not only provide renewable energy but also enhance their incomes. In Tanzania more than 10 000 small farmers have established Jatropha plantations and many more have done so in the rest of East Africa. By 2008, Jatropha had already been planted over an estimated 900 000 ha globally of which an overwhelming 85% was in Asia, 13% in Africa and the rest in Latin America, and by 2015 Jatropha is expected to be planted on 12.8 million ha worldwide. But the results are anything but encouraging. In India the provisions of mandatory blending could not be enforced as seed production fell far short of the expectation and a recent study has reported discontinuance by 85% of the Jatropha farmers. In China also until today there is very little production of biodiesel from Jatropha seeds. In Tanzania the results are very unsatisfactory and a research study found the net present value of a fiveyear investment in Jatropha plantation was negative with a loss of US$ 65 per ha on lands with yields of 2 tons/ha of seeds and only slightly beneficial at US$ 9 per ha with yields of 3 tons when the average expected Jatropha seed yield on poor barren soils is only 1.7 to 2.2 tons/ha. Even on normal fertile soils (average seed yield 3.9 to 7.5 tons/ha) Jatropha was no match for sunflower. Though acclaimed widely for its oil, Jatropha was never considered economically important enough for domestication and its seed and oil productivity is hugely variable. The species indeed grows wild in many semiarid habitats of low productivity but the lack of moisture and nutrition is invariably reflected in its seed production. The flowering season and number of flowering events, and male to female flower ratio in Jatropha is dependent upon soil fertility and available moisture, and temperature and these factors affect the production of seeds. In drier zones the species exhibits one major flowering flush whereas in the more humid areas it flowers episodically depending on moisture conditions. Thus its phenotypic, physiological, and biochemical variability expressed in flowering age, intensity, and frequency, and seed size and oil content, is largely an epigenetic response to the varied environment it encounters as the phenotypic plasticity of genetic traits allows morphological and physiological adjustments with the environ. But such epigenetic accommodation lowers plant efficiency which is also reflected in its lowered seed production capacity. A case study of Jatropha plantations raised in 1993 1994 in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh had reported actual yields that were far below expectations and the species was found to be prone to termite attacks, water logging, vulnerable to drought in the planting year and delayed yields. These observations are, however, nothing out of ordinary and should have been anticipated by the Planning Commission of India, the powerful apex body that decides national priorities and allocates funds for them, before taking up such a continent sized