Talk:Jatropha

On 10 September 2007, Jatropha was linked from Slashdot, a high-traffic website. (Traffic) All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history.

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Treekids said: "the 10k figure was aparently from india- it's been recanted. see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYH/is_15_7/ai_107215410)"

Personally, I also tend to be suspicious of the 10,000 kg/ha figure. But numbers like it are still being widely used by NGOs and development agencies, and the director of ICRISAT did feel the need to use it in the scidev.net article (which is dated several years later than the one Treekids mentioned). It's probably too early in the game to narrow the Wikipedia yield range so much. --Belgrano (talk) 18:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When I updated the information about jatropha seed and oil yields to better reflect the current scientific situation, I also deleted the statement that jatropha "yields more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean; more than ten times that of corn." The 1892 l ha^-1 biodiesel yield reported in the cited MIT article is three or four times larger than 500 to 600 l ha^-1 soybean biodiesel yields. However, it is substantially smaller than the 3000 to 4000 l ha^-1 of ethanol obtainable from corn grain production (or roughly equal, if the higher energy content of biodiesel is considered). I would have an easy time believing that jatropha biodiesel has a net energy balance ten times that of corn, but that's a different matter. --Belgrano (talk) 22:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would somebody with necessary information include a taxonomy box to this article? Expanding in general is welcome as well. --Chino 06:57, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

umm im doing a report right now and the its only part of the seed , not the husk which is actually removed and discarded. and they are used in digestors to produce bio gas, consisting mostly of methane, which is then used with diesel in generators. thought you should know, minor detail.

The merge request for Jatropha incentives in India has been there for over a month now. I think the merge is a good idea for the moment. The main articles short enough to have a section on recient incentives which would also add to the significance of the plant. --Salix alba (talk) 23:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about India's effort as a country to become energy independent. It happens that one of the strategies is encouraging the growing of Jatropha, but the article itself is not about Jatropha. It is about how the Government of India and the governments of various states in India are trying to encourage the growing Jatropha for several reasons -- to reduce unemployment, to use wasted land, and to encourage renewable sources of energy. The photo used in the article comes from an Indian government promotional site, so it would be inappropriate to use it in a general Jatropha article. Perhaps the name of the article needs changing. Would that help? Also, the articles it links to are not interested in the plant but in problems of energy production. India is one of the biggest users of electricity in the world. The country has been trying in many ways to address this issue. Sincerely, Mattisse 00:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The two articles have nothing in common. If you want to beef up the jatropha article, please don't do it at the expense of India's energy policy. Please at least read the article first, before proposing such a harmful change and the wiping out of an important article in our attempt to do a series on India's energy solutions. Please, do that as a curtesy, even if India has no "pull" here. Sincerely, Mattisse 05:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may be about India's energy policy, but it seems more reasonable to link to Jatropha than have a separate article on it. As the Jatropha article is short there is not risk of cluttering it up. This would not be to "beef it up" because there is a lacking, but because it belongs in there. The only justification for it being separate would be if there was already a copious amount of information and adding it would risk making the Jatropha article unmanageable. But, as that is not a risk, as it is currently a small article, there is no reason to branch the Jatropha into separate sections.

I think India's energy policies are important, and that is why I think it should be merged with Jatropha. It ads immediate credit to Jatropha as a source of feedstock for biodiesel. More information about Jatropha and what other countries are doing with it may help it become a more widely used feedstock for biodiesel, and India will have been the trend setter. Merge them. alan.elger 10:39am, 12 February 2007 (PCT)

Jatropha article is a more botanical entry, similar to articles for other species from plant kingdom. cause confusion for readers (such as a young student from other continents) that want to know more about the plant, rather than its energy implications in India.

Jatropha is a plant and this article can be expanded separately. This article may further be developed by expanding its characteristics, cultivation techniques, research and extension needed to increase its production, its other utilizations etc. It should not be merged with Jatropha incentives in India, which can be be a part of article Energy policy of India. burdak 17:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This makes no sense whatsoever. "The rail line between Mumbai and Delhi is planted with Jatropha and the train itself runs on 15-20% biodiesel."

The mainline from Mumbai to Delhi is over 1300 KM long - Jatropha is not planted all along the entire route - just in a couple of small areas.

Also, the entire route is electrified and the vast majority of the trains on this route are hauled by electric locomotives. There have been a couple of small-scale efforts to run a few diesel railcars and locomotives on biodiesel.

I have removed this paragraph which appeared in the article:

Per the CIA Factbook^[1], the United States consumes 20.73 million barrels of oil per day ( 7.566 billion barrels a year annualized), has a total land area of 9,161,923 sq km ( 2,263,960,477 acres), and 18.1% of that land is considered arable. If we assume that Jatropha yields 6.5 barrels of oil per acre annually ^[2], energy equivalence between Jatropha oil and crude oil, and an equivalent ERoEI ratio ( energy returned over energy invested), then the U.S. would need 1,164,000,000 acres of land to completely offload its current energy requirements onto Jatropha based biofuels. This would require devoting 51.4% of the total U.S. land mass to Jatropha cultivation for energy independence.

This para is original research and analysis. It is synthesising data to advance a position, yet WP:OR says:

• Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought.
• Articles should only contain verifiable content from reliable sources without further analysis.
• Content should not be synthesized to advance a position.

As far as I can see, the "CIA Factbook" does not even mention Jatropha. -- Johnfos 20:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Performing math isn't original research. Its taking two published numbers, and dividing them. The comments that I took out constitute and unsourced claim, but the outcome of a math calculation is not OR. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 21:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's the "assuming" and all the other number choices that make this OR. The paragraph is arguing for a conclusion based on putting together a bunch of data and analyzing it, which is about as pure a case of OR as one can get. Mangoe 22:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I concur that the removed paragraph falls under original research policy and does not belong in this article. Burlywood 12:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The CIA Factbook doesn't mention Jatropha, but it does provide the numbers. Who needs to do the math before it becomes unoriginal research? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.214.193.26 (talk) 14:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A reliable source known for their fact checking and accuracy Nil Einne (talk) 09:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jatropha is normally intercropped anyway, so if I've understood correctly the 51.4% wouldn't need to be used for just that single crop.WolfKeeper 18:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether you're right (it depends whether the MIT source considered Jatropha being intercropped or the sole crop when they derived then 6.5 barrels/acre figure) but your point highlights why OR is a bad idea. What seems 'simple math' is actually complicated since we have to make sure we're understanding the sources properly Nil Einne (talk) 09:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jatropha is currently being planted with the intention of producing biodiesel from it. Nobody is crushing it at the moment. I don't have an external link to back this up as it is something I know from my professional work, but there is nothing in the articles linked to that says anything more than that planting is being done and that a few cars/lorries/trains have been run on small amounts on a test basis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.120.115.125 (talk) 16:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added www.plantjatropha.com link in the main page not for advertisement but to share our experiences economics for executing large scal projects for jatropha plantation. Biomass aspect is often missed and that has been our focus to make the plantation economically viable. I get several questions on these topics through the link that was posted on this site. I would request the administrator to please add the link again. [] 17:04, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm removing the reference to anti-tumor activity, because there is no source cited. A quick google scholar search came up with about as many articles suggesting that extracts had tumor promoting substances as anti-tumor. Whatever the facts are, a claim of this nature needs to be backed up with credible sources. Ac1201 (talk) 04:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to know if Jatropha is nitrogen fixing. I have read conflicting information about this on the internet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary Cziko (talk • contribs) 14:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jathropha is resistent to drought, but does not grow much or produce any oil on dry lands. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.161.130 (talk) 09:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why was Jatropha oil merged into this article? At least the now confusing links to Jatropha oil should have been adjusted. But more importantly, now this article about the genus Jatropha contains a lot of specialized information about the species Jatropha curcas.

I'll undo the merge if this isn't explained.

Also the information is rather outdated, but that's another problem.

--Pjacobi (talk) 07:00, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did the merge because there was a big section in this article on jatropha oil that mostly duplicated the information in the old jatropha oil article. IMO it is unproductive to have two articles that cover the same matter, especially when neither of them is very long. What are the links that you find confusing? Jytdog (talk) 14:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But Jatropha oil was intentionally created as a satellite article! If the information is duplicated, the oil information should be in the satellite article. And if it should be mergend (which I still consider the less good option), it has to be merged to Jatropha curcas.

--Pjacobi (talk) 16:37, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]