All Washed Up for Jatropha?

A comprehensive new analysis of water use in biofuel crop production finds that jatropha, an oil-rich plant championed for its ability to grow in arid regions where food crops cannot, is the biggest water hog of them all.

Researchers from the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, report in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that jatropha requires five times as much water per unit of energy as sugarcane and corn, and nearly ten times as much as sugar beet–the most water-efficient biofuel crop, according to the same study.
In recent years, as corn and other biofuel came under fire for driving up the cost of food production, some biofuel producers turned to Jatropha curcas, a weed that grows wild throughout the tropics and semitropics and produces seeds rich in oil.

In 2007, the oil-industry heavyweight BP teamed up with British biofuels company D1 Oils on a five-year,