JOil announce first-year yields of jatropha

JOil, a scientific bioenergy crop developer of a new generation of jatropha, has achieved first-year yields in its India field trials of over 2 tons of seeds per hectare.

'Our [JO S1 and JO S2] seedlings started flowering three months after planting and in five months yielded their first harvest of fruit. Most current jatropha plants have no fruiting in the first year after planting and any first-year yields are negligible,' says Dr Hong Yan, Chief Scientific Officer of JOil.

He continues, "we put the JO S1 and S2 seed into trials in multiple locations around the world for local climate adaptation and field performance evaluation. After 12 months, we achieved the first-year harvest on two plots of marginal land more than 200 km apart in Tamil Nadu, South India. Given that jatropha matures and reaches peak yield in three to four years, this shows that the JOil open pollinated varieties have the potential to reach mature yields of more than five tons of seeds per hectare at which point the production of jatropha seed reaches a level that allows it to be a sustainable feed stock for large-scale commercial production of bio diesel for airlines and motor transport fleet operations."

In the recent trials, JOil obtained 2.4 tons of seeds per hectare at a plantation near the city of Coimbatore. The other trial in the city of Madurai produced 2.15 tons of seeds per hectare.

The two elite jatropha varieties tested have demonstrated better uniformity, improved self-branching and early flowering compared to existing commercial varieties and wild types of jatropha planted in similar conditions. All these traits have contributed to early establishment and good productivity for the first year.

The JO S1 and JO S2 seedlings, along with the other JOil varieties are undergoing field trials at a number of places across Asia. Plans are in place for an expanded program that will include African locations. JOil is carrying out tests in two states of India and in West Java, whilst its partner Toyota Tsusho is conducting trials in the Philippines and Cambodia.

'We are embarking on an expanded field trial programme that will see our elite jatropha grown in Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, China, Malaysia and Vietnam,' says Dr Srinivasan Ramachandran, Chief Technology Officer of JOil. 'Multi-location trials help us evaluate the performance of our elite varieties and help identify which ones work best in different agro-climatic environments.'

JOil aims to continuously improve jatropha through breeding, tissue culture and genetic modification to achieve higher oil yield and quality.