Yesterday an Air New Zealand passenger jet partly fueled by vegetable oil made a successful two hour test flight, including a full power take-off and a cruise to 35,000 feet. One of the engines of the Boeing 747-400 was powered by a 50-50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and standard A1 jet fuel.

Native to Central America, jatropha–grown for fuel in the Philippines, India, parts of the African continent and Mali–shows promise in bio-diesel development. The seeds are the source of oil, and the waste matter can also be processed used as biomass feedstock to power electricity plants or used as fertilizer.

Unlike ethanol from corn or the bio-fuel mixture of palm and coconut oil used in February for a similar Boeing -Virgin Atlantic test flight, the source of jatropha, jatropha curcas, does not appear to compete with food or other commercial crops for arable land. The majority of bio-diesel is made from feed grains, like corn and soy, ostensibly impacting food costs.  Jatropha can grow on land that would make poor farmland and needs little water, and its only use is for fuel.

The plant is highly toxic when eaten, and it is unclear whether the vast amounts needed to fuel commercial jet liners would be viable. However, in India, the railway line between Mumbai and Delhi is planted with jatropha and the train itself runs on 15-20% biodiesel.   Jatropha fuel can be used in diesel vehicles as well. 

Currently, the drop in oil prices has made plant-derived fuel significantly more expensive to produce than the fossil fuel.   But plants, unlike oil, are a renewable resource and absorb about 50% of the carbon dioxide emitted during the burning of bio-diesel.  In early 2009 Continental Airlines plans to fly a two-hour flight out of Houston with an engine burning a 50-50 blend of petroleum-based jet fuel and bio-fuel from algae and jatropha, while Japan Airlines plans a test flight on a biofuel made primarily from another oild seed plant, camelina.