In response to our article on the water footprint (WF) of bioenergy (1), Maes et al. (2) argue that we overestimated the WF of jatropha oil, used data from a limited number of plantations , and made methodological errors. We did use little data, because hardly any data on jatropha production are available. Although we took data from various plantations from different countries, Maes et al. stat...

Published in Agron. J. 103:980–987 (2011) Posted online 18 Apr 2011 doi:10.2134/agronj2010.0485 Copyright © 2011 by the American Society of Agronomy, 5585 Guilford Road, Madison, WI 53711. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrie...

BACKGROUND Camelina sativa is an emerging dedicated oilseed crop designed for biofuel and biodiesel applications as well as a source for edible and general-purpose oils. Such valuable oilseed crop is subjected to plant breeding programs and is suggested for large-scale production of better seed and oil quality. To accomplish this objective and to further enhance its oil content, a better unders...

Background Biotechnology enables the production of high-valued industrial feedstocks from plant seed oil. The plant-derived wax esters with long-chain monounsaturated acyl moieties, like oleyl oleate, have favorite properties for lubrication. For biosynthesis of wax esters using acyl-CoA substrates, expressions of a fatty acyl reductase (FAR) and a wax synthase (WS) in seeds are sufficient. R...

In a semi-arid environment, the main challenge for crop production is water limitation in space and in time. Considered as appropriate tools, models are used to evaluate the effects of water deficit on crop productivity for better irrigation planning and sustainable yield. The AquaCrop model was tested using data collected during a 4-year experiment on soybean (Glycine max L. Merril) and s...

Opuntia ficus indica and Pistacia lentiscus L. seeds are used in traditional medicine. The objective of this study was to investigate the toxicity of the fixed oil of Opuntia ficus indica and Pistacia lentiscus L. seeds in mice through determination of LD₅₀ values, and also the physicochemical characteristics of the fixed oil of these oils. The acute toxicity of their fixed oil were also invest...

chemical composition and physicochemical properties of pumpkin seeds and fatty acids of their oil were determined. it was found that the seeds contained 41.59% oil and 25.4% protein. moisture, crude fiber, total ash, and carbohydrate contents were 5.2%, 5.34%, 2.49%, and 25.19%, respectively. the specific gravity, dynamic viscosity, and refractive index of the extracted pumpkin seed oil were 0....

This study aims to evaluate energy, economic, and environmental performances of seven categories of biodiesel feedstocks by using the mixed-unit input-output life cycle assessment method. Various feedstocks have different environmental performances, indicating potential environmental problem-shift. Jatropha seed, castor seed, waste cooking oil, and waste extraction oil are preferred feedstocks ...