JATROPT · Jatropha curcas Applied and Technological Research on Plant Traits

Jatropha curcas shows a big promise towards sustainable and affordable biofuels. Several groups are working independently towards development of both agrosystems and high quality germplasm of Jatropha, and downstream processing and biodiesel markets. The challenges are to make the big promises come true: high oil yield, low competition with food crops, use in various agrosystems from monoculture plantations, to mixed cropping and use in hedges around agricultural fields. JATROPT aims at linking high quality research groups and companies that are now operating in different continents in order to achieve a large synergy in research and development of jatropha as a biofuel crop. In five Workpackages (Breeding, Genetic tools, Sustainable Agrosystems, Demonstrating and Dissemination), the following aims are pursued: 1) Achieve a world wide germplasm collection of Jatropha curcas, molecularly characterised in order to classify the collection into groups with similar genetic backgrounds; evaluation of elite germplasm of this collection in Asia, Africa and Latin-America; linking segregating population based on parents from different parts of the world and creating a global Jatropha linkage map. 2) Develop genetic information and marker tools (genetics of toxic/low toxic trait, branching patterns; disease resistance) to speed up the breeding process. 3) Develop agrosystems that yield sustainable and affordable biofuels - and interesting uses of the co-products (biomass/protein residues after oil extraction), with a focus on Pro Poor development and on designing systems in which competion for food and fuel can be minimised; 4) Demonstration of the potential of local/regional use of produced biofuels to increase agricultural and general economic productivity will be investigated. 5) Achieve dissemination of knowledge on quality of germplasm, on genetics and sustainable agrosystems setting up distribution of combined packages of agronomic guidelines and germplasm.