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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "miracle" biofuel. A simple shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on degraded lands throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.
A jatropha rush occurred, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields resulted in plantation failures nearly everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.
Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they state, is dependent on cracking the yield issue and addressing the hazardous land-use concerns linked with its initial failure.
The sole remaining large jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have actually been attained and a brand-new boom is at hand. But even if this return falters, the world's experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.
At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, a simple 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 could 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 study and advancement, the sole remaining big plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha resurgence is on.

"All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the procedure that was missed out on [throughout the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

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

But some researchers are skeptical, noting that jatropha has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach full capacity, then it is necessary to gain from previous mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by poor yields, but by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in nations where it was planted, including Ghana, where .

Experts likewise recommend that jatropha's tale provides lessons for scientists and entrepreneurs exploring appealing brand-new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal came from its promise as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from yards, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several supposed virtues was an ability to prosper on degraded or "marginal" lands; hence, it was declared it would never 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 seemed miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or too much demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food since it is toxic."

Governments, international firms, investors and companies purchased into the buzz, introducing initiatives 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 prepared for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Pals of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha's high demands for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide review kept in mind that "growing outmatched 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 thrive 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 stop working as expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on degraded lands and tolerate dry spell conditions, as declared, however yields remained poor.

"In my opinion, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, and possible to grow under relatively poorer conditions, produced a very huge issue," resulting in "underestimated 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 economic problems, say professionals. 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 led to a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss ranged in between two and 14 years, and "in some circumstances, the carbon debt might never be recuperated." In India, production showed carbon benefits, however using fertilizers led to boosts of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."

"If you look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was situated on marginal land, but the idea of marginal land is very evasive," explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the nation over several years, and found that a lax definition of "limited" suggested that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The fact that ... presently nobody is utilizing [land] for farming does not mean that nobody is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite images."

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be found out from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which should be observed when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

"There was a boom [in investment], however regrettably not of research study, and action was taken based on supposed benefits of jatropha," states Bart Muys, a teacher in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha hype was winding down, Muys and colleagues released a paper mentioning key lessons.

Fundamentally, he explains, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This crucial requirement for upfront research study might be used to other potential biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for instance, his team released a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species" with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and marginal land. But Muys's research revealed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that "pongamia still can not be thought about a significant and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting knowledge gaps." Use of such cautionary information could avoid inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

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

Gasparatos underlines crucial requirements that should be met before moving ahead with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields should be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a ready market needs to be readily available.

"Basically, the crop requires 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 odd."

How biofuel lands are acquired is likewise essential, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities must ensure that "standards are put in place to inspect how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease some of the problems we observed."

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still think that under the ideal conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel option - particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "responsible for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."

"I think jatropha has some prospective, however it requires to be the right product, grown in the ideal location, and so on," Muys stated.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Qatar's Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha curcas. He sees it as a manner in which Qatar may decrease airline company carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its usage as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% decrease of "cradle to tomb" emissions.

Alherbawi's team is carrying out continuous 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 truly improve the soil and agricultural lands, and safeguard them against any more degeneration triggered by dust storms," he says.

But the Qatar job's success still hinges on lots of elements, not least the capability to get quality yields from the tree. Another essential step, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the whole of the jatropha fruit to increase processing effectiveness.

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) dealing with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research study and advancement have actually led to varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were lacking more than a years earlier.

"We were able to accelerate the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and boost the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree," Subramanian states. In essence, he states, 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 looking at. The fruit and its by-products 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 perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. "The biofuels story has actually as soon as again resumed with the energy shift drive for oil companies and bio-refiners - [driven by] the search for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly."

A complete jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be finished, but he believes 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 prospect for adoption for ... sustainable aviation," he says. "Our company believe any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way endangering food security of any nation."

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially accountable depends on intricate elements, including where and how it's grown - whether, for example, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state experts. Then there's the irritating problem of attaining high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, transformed dry savanna forest, which became bothersome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was frequently unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha sites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he describes.

Other researchers chronicle the "capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain uncertain of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so effective, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use change," 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 conducted research study on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions past land-use issues associated with growth of various crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our police is so weak that it can not handle the economic sector doing whatever they want, in terms of producing environmental problems."

Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based animals feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well suited to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays worried about possible environmental expenses.

He suggests limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that dominates land," growing it just in truly bad soils in need of restoration. "Jatropha could be one of those plants that can grow in really sterile wastelands," he describes. "That's the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest healing method for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are greater than the potential benefits."

Jatropha's international future stays unsure. And its potential as a tool in the battle against environment change can only be unlocked, say numerous specialists, by preventing the litany of problems connected with its very first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is "imminent" which the comeback is on. "We have strong interest from the energy market now," he states, "to work together 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 guide: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts

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