Another cross-post, from the Stoves list, to underscore a point I keep making, that "yield" isn't the only thing that counts. The "best" oil crop doesn't exist except in theory. In practice, it depends on local factors. Dr Karve's letter from India demonstrates this as far as yield is concerned. Even if a particular crop does grow well locally and yields more, it still might not be the best choice - how it fits in with local cropping patterns, what other uses it or other crops might have that might have local value, what local growers are accustomed to and have existing skills for, and what they themselves prefer might all be more important than mere yield. A wide range of available options is needed to find the best crop for any given situation, and the crop or crops that are already being grown there have big advantages over any new crop that would have to be introduced.
These are conservative figures, but they do give a comparison of yields: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html Vegetable oil yields, characteristics Best Keith >From: "A.D. Karve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "Harmon Seaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: Jatropha oil as household energy (forwarding Henning) >Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 21:29:28 +0530 > >Dear Mr. Seaver, > I have conducted field experiments on both castor and Jatropha. I had >already mentioned in a previous E-mail, that Jatropha was tested rather >widely in India and was given up because it was not found to be as high >yielding as the traditional oil crops in India. I do not know how it >behaves in other countries, but under our agroclimatic and edaphic >conditions, Jatropha produces much more vegetative matter than fruits. At >harvest, one has to search for the occasional fruit hidden behind all the >foliage that this plant produces. It is found all over India as a wild >plant. India has some 25 uncultivated species of trees that yield >non-edible oil. The seed of the wild trees is collected by villagers and >sold to merchants attending the weekly village markets, but no farmer would >ever think of growing them as a crop, because all of them are lower yielding >than the cultivated oil plants such as peanut, soybean, sunflower, >safflower, sesame, various mustards and rapes, coconut, etc. Among the >seasonal oilseeds, hybrid castor is the highest yielding (2.5 tonnes oil per >ha), but it is not an edible oil. The highest yield of edible oil, also >about 2.5 tonnes per ha, is obtained from coconut. Oil palm, which yields 6 >tonnes of oil per hectare in Malaysia, was tested and given up as low >yielding under Indian conditions. >Yours A.D.Karve ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
