The tribes of Northeast India have been using jatropha seeds to light their huts at night. It contains 35 per cent fuel and is not edible. Best of all, it thrives in degraded land. And Dl-Williamson Magor Bio Fuel, a joint venture between tea major Williamson Magor and UK-based Dl-bp Fuel Crops, has been providing seeds for contract farming in eastern and north-eastern India. The business model envisages setting up of nurseries and crop management systems. Much of the Northeast is afflicted by the slash and burn 'jhoom' cultivation, which denudes the land and makes it uncultivable after the first year. And, the land is fallow for five years. Jatropha grows well in these lands and begins to yield small amounts within a year, which increases to 3.5 kg per tree per year and then to over 7 kg per tree per year after five years for the next 25-30 years. Dl-Williamson buys the seeds for Rs5 a kg from farmers. Each kg yields about 350 ml of fuel worth about Rsl2 in the market. Jatropha diesel is priced at Rs26.50 per litre and a blend of 20 per cent is effective for diesel engines. The price is expected to rise soon, as per the draft prepared by the ministry of renewal energy. "Crude oil price will go up and is likely to be stable at $85-100 a barrel. Hence, in future, bio-diesel will play a major role," says Aditya Khaitan, chairman, Dl-Williamson. Williamson Magor has been operating tea plantations in north-eastern India for 140 years, which has helped boost the area under jatropha cultivation to 1.35 lakh hectares, with a capital expenditure of Rs50 crore, covering 3,000 villages in the Northeast, Chhat-tisgarh and Orissa in less than three years. "The company will invest Rs90 crore for an expeller plant at Balipara at Tezpur," says Khaitan. It is expected to yield about 2,000 tonnes of commercial bio-diesel this year end. Dl-Williamson has been signing on farmers for planting jatropha on wasteland. It has organised village meetings, set up training centres and nurseries, distributed jatropha saplings, provided on-site expert visits, and offered buy-back facilities. "The effort has yielded about 85,000 hectares under jatropha in the Northeast, of which, 80 per cent are bpl farmers," says Pradip Bhar, ceo of the company. He says that the yield, at about Rsl8,000 per hectare, is a secondary income for the farmer. He expects a break-even in three years. India consumes 60 million tonnes of diesels annually, 42 million tonnes of which is imported. Hence, the scope for jatropha consumption seems almost endless. Reliance, Mission Biofuels, Nandan Bio Metric and ikf Green are also making investments in jatropha fuel in India. Mercedes Benz India-funded Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (csmcri) in Gujarat conducts research on jatropha oil in 100 acres of cultivation at Andhra Pradesh. The car manufacturer has done test drives using unblended bio-diesel over 6,000 km of roads in nine states in India in 2004, followed by cold weather high altitude tests at Khardungla pass in Himalayas, without any engine modifications, in 2005. "The test results have established that the pm emission level has been only 70 per cent of conventional oils," says Suhas Kadlaskar, who is in charge of the bio-fuels initiative. The company is considering industry synergies to propagate the bio-diesel concept on a larger scale. There is, of course, the controversy over fuel security versus food security, with concerns that bio-fuel production could divert agricultural production away from food crops. But as Pramod Chaudhari, chairman, en's national bio-fuels committee, says, "As global reserves of fossil fuels shrink, bio-fuel industries have to get their act together." And Indian companies are looking at land acquisitions abroad - in South America, Africa and Malaysia -for jatropha cultivation. Alain .Jeanroy, director general, Confederation of Sugarbeet Planters, France, feels that the 'food vs fuel' debate is dying down with more people accepting that ethanol and bio-diesel are the only solutions available in the short term. "Food prices have nothing to do with fuel use," he says. "Wheat prices have fallen 40 per cent, though it cannot be used to make ethanol; and sugar has not gone up in the past two years." And Renault has an ongoing research partnership on jatropha and bio-diesel with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. "Bio-fuel is a win-win solution, because it costs half and is easy to switch," says Philippe Schulz of strategic energy and environment planning, at the French car-maker. "As jatropha is non-edible and grown on degraded land, it will not conflict with food security," says Bhar. Considering that India has about 60 million hectares of waste land, the prospects of a jatropha crop boom seem immense.