Drought Response Identified in Potential Biofuel Plant

Drought resistance is the key to large-scale production of Jatropha, a potential biofuel plant -- and an international group of scientists has identified the first step toward engineering a hardier variety.

Jatropha has seeds with high oil content. But the oil's potential as a biofuel is limited because, for large-scale production, this shrub-like plant needs the same amount of care and resources as crop plants.

"It is thought that Jatropha's future lies in further improvement of Jatropha for large-scale production on marginal, non-food croplands through breeding and/or biotechnology," said John E. Carlson, professor of molecular genetics at Penn State. "The more that is known about the genetic basis of Jatropha's key attributes such as drought tolerance, the more readily Jatropha improvement will progress."

According to Carlson, Jatropha currently grows best in tropical countries and is already being cultivated as a biofuel on a small scale in India, Southeast Asia and Africa. Breeding a strain that could do well in arid, barren conditions could enable mass cultivation, but large-scale production may still be decades away.

Researchers looked at a little known gene -- JcPIP1 -- because a similar gene in the model plant Arabidopsis is known to play a role in drought response. They also examined JcPIP2, a potential drought response gene in Jatropha identified in 2007 by researchers at Sichuan University.