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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "wonder" biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.
A jatropha rush took place, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields resulted in plantation failures almost everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.
Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they say, depends on splitting the yield problem and addressing the damaging land-use issues intertwined with its original failure.
The sole staying big jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this return fails, the world's experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any appealing up-and-coming biofuel.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its promise as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on deteriorated, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields failed.

Now, after years of research and development, the sole staying large plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha comeback is on.

"All those companies 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 [during the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the errors of jatropha's previous failures, he states the oily plant might yet play an essential function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transport carbon emissions at the international level. A brand-new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are skeptical, 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 necessary to discover from past mistakes. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not just by poor yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in nations where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also suggest that jatropha's tale uses lessons for researchers and business owners exploring promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal originated 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 numerous purported virtues was an ability to grow on abject or "minimal" lands; hence, it was claimed it would never ever take on food crops, so the theory went.

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

Governments, international agencies, financiers and companies bought into the hype, releasing efforts to plant, or pledge to plant, countless 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 got ready for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha's high demands for land would certainly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a global evaluation noted that "cultivation surpassed both scientific understanding of the crop's potential in addition to an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can prosper on minimal lands."

Projections approximated 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, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to fail as expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on degraded lands and tolerate dry spell conditions, as claimed, however yields remained poor.

"In my opinion, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented capacity, and prospective to grow under fairly poorer conditions, produced a really huge issue," resulting in "ignored yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos states.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by environmental, social and economic problems, state professionals. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and clearing of natural locations were reported.

Studies found that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss varied between 2 and 14 years, and "in some situations, the carbon financial obligation might never ever be recovered." In India, production showed carbon benefits, but making use of fertilizers resulted in increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."

"If you take a look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was positioned on limited land, however the concept of minimal land is very elusive," explains Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and discovered that a lax meaning of "limited" that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The reality that ... presently nobody is using [land] for farming does not imply that no one is utilizing it [for other functions] There are a great deal of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you might not always see from satellite images."

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state analysts, which should be followed when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

"There was a boom [in investment], however unfortunately not of research, and action was taken based upon supposed advantages of jatropha," states 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 unwinding, Muys and coworkers released a paper mentioning key lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for in advance research might be applied to other prospective biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for example, his team launched a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species" with biofuel pledge.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and minimal land. But Muys's research revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that "pongamia still can not be thought about a considerable and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing understanding gaps." Use of such cautionary information might prevent inefficient monetary speculation and negligent land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

"There are other extremely promising trees or plants that might act as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer," Muys states. "We wished to prevent [them going] in the exact same instructions of early hype and stop working, like jatropha."

Gasparatos underlines vital requirements that need to be fulfilled before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and an all set 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 states. Jatropha "was virtually undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange."

How biofuel lands are obtained is likewise key, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities should make sure that "guidelines are put in place to inspect how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to reduce some of the problems we observed."

A jatropha return?

Despite all these difficulties, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha could be a valuable biofuel option - especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."

"I believe jatropha has some prospective, but it requires to be the right product, grown in the ideal 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 method that Qatar might reduce airline company carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% decrease of "cradle to tomb" emissions.

Alherbawi's team is carrying out ongoing field research studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The application of the green belt can truly enhance the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them against any additional deterioration brought on by dust storms," he says.

But the Qatar task's success still depends upon numerous elements, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another essential action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production technology that uses the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing performance.

Back in Ghana, jOil is presently managing more than 1,300 hectares (1,830 acres) of jatropha, and growing a pilot plot on 300 hectares (740 acres) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research study and development have actually led to varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade back.

"We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree," Subramanian states. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. "Our very first project is to broaden our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares."

Biofuels aren't the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its byproducts could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (essential 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 once again resumed with the energy shift drive for oil companies and bio-refiners - [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly."

A total jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be finished, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be "competitive ... These two aspects - that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration - makes it a really strong candidate for adoption for ... sustainable aviation," he states. "We think any such growth will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any country."

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends on intricate aspects, including where and how it's grown - whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state professionals. Then there's the unpleasant issue of achieving high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, transformed dry savanna forest, which ended up being problematic for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was frequently unfavorable in many of the jatropha websites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he explains.

Other researchers chronicle the "potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain uncertain of the ecological viability of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially ends up being so effective, that we will have a lot of associated land-use modification," states Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. trainee with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

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

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as an inexpensive and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well suited to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays concerned about prospective ecological expenses.

He suggests restricting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a "crop that dominates land," growing it only in really bad soils in requirement of remediation. "Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in really sterilized wastelands," he describes. "That's the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest recovery strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are higher than the possible benefits."

Jatropha's global future stays unpredictable. And its possible as a tool in the battle versus climate modification can only be unlocked, state many professionals, by preventing the litany of difficulties related to its first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its function as a sustainable biofuel is "impending" and that the comeback is on. "We have strong interest from the energy industry now," he says, "to team up with us to establish and broaden the supply chain of jatropha."

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

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

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