The Centre of Excellence in Bio-fuels of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University has been selected as one of the networking partners in the European Union funded project “JATROPT – Jatropha curcas : Applied and Technological Research in Plant Trials” for four years.
According to Vice-Chancellor of the university P. Murugesa Boopathi, the project will be executed with an outlay of Euros 1,15,937 (Rs.69.56 lakh). It will be co-ordinated by the Plant Research International, Wageningen, Netherlands.
The European Union project involves nine countries, viz., Brazil, France, Gautemala, India, Madagascar, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
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M. Paramathma, Director of Research, TNAU, would be the principal investigator and project management team member in India. “Jatropha shows immense potential towards producing sustainable and affordable bio-fuels. Several groups are working independently for the development of both agro-systems and high quality germplasm of Jatropha, and downstream processing and bio-diesel markets,” he said.
However, the challenges were to make the expectations of high oil yield, low competition with food crops, use in various agro-systems from monoculture plantations, to mixed cropping and use in hedges around agricultural fields.