Wild tree could be fruitful for rural poor
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Amy Yee, FT Syndication Service
NEW DELHI: Pongamia, or Indian beech tree, is indigenous to India and grows wild along roads and in forests. For many years Indians have used oil from its large, oblong nuts as fuel for lamps and cooking fires.
But in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka the push is now on to grow pongamia on a larger scale as a potential source of biofuel. Andhra Pradesh's government plans to plant 10,000 acres of pongamia and link the work of raising and planting seedlings to a state job-creation programme.
Like jatropha, another biofuel crop, pongamia can grow with relatively little water on fallow land. India's Department of Land Resources says the country has 158m acres of wasteland, which could be used to grow biofuel crops.
Pongamia requires less fertiliser because it is a "nitrogen-fixing" plant, says the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), which is conducting agricultural research and guiding projects in India.
The non-edible seeds of both pongamia and jatropha can yield about 30 per cent oil that can be used to run farm equipment and engines, or be refined to make biodiesel for vehicles. It takes four kilogrammes of pongamia seeds to yield a litre of oil.
Cultivating trees could also become a valuable source of income for the rural poor without displacing agricultural land.
"The benefits are multiple and significant: easing poverty, reducing air pollution, mitigating global warming, and rehabilitating degraded wastelands," Icrisat said in a paper last year.
India's central government is focusing more on jatropha - possibly because it is a short bush and its nuts are therefore easier to harvest - and takes just three years to mature, in contrast to five to seven for pongamia.
The country's Ministry of Rural Development has proposed spending $375m (euro252m, £182m) over five years to plant 1.2m acres of jatropha across India and research the crop's viability as a biofuel. If successful, the government would aim for 30m acres of jatropha plantations while looking for ways to privatise cultivation.
But large-scale cultivation of the trees is unproven and it remains to be seen whether either pongamia or jatropha can be commercialised. Cultivating suitable varieties of the trees, certifying seeds and clarifying who owns fallow land are some of the challenges.
Some states are charging ahead. The poor, landlocked state of Chattisgarh aims to plant 380,000 acres of jatropha on fallow land and eventually to run all government vehicles on biodiesel.
NEW DELHI: Pongamia, or Indian beech tree, is indigenous to India and grows wild along roads and in forests. For many years Indians have used oil from its large, oblong nuts as fuel for lamps and cooking fires.
But in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka the push is now on to grow pongamia on a larger scale as a potential source of biofuel. Andhra Pradesh's government plans to plant 10,000 acres of pongamia and link the work of raising and planting seedlings to a state job-creation programme.
Like jatropha, another biofuel crop, pongamia can grow with relatively little water on fallow land. India's Department of Land Resources says the country has 158m acres of wasteland, which could be used to grow biofuel crops.
Pongamia requires less fertiliser because it is a "nitrogen-fixing" plant, says the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), which is conducting agricultural research and guiding projects in India.
The non-edible seeds of both pongamia and jatropha can yield about 30 per cent oil that can be used to run farm equipment and engines, or be refined to make biodiesel for vehicles. It takes four kilogrammes of pongamia seeds to yield a litre of oil.
Cultivating trees could also become a valuable source of income for the rural poor without displacing agricultural land.
"The benefits are multiple and significant: easing poverty, reducing air pollution, mitigating global warming, and rehabilitating degraded wastelands," Icrisat said in a paper last year.
India's central government is focusing more on jatropha - possibly because it is a short bush and its nuts are therefore easier to harvest - and takes just three years to mature, in contrast to five to seven for pongamia.
The country's Ministry of Rural Development has proposed spending $375m (euro252m, £182m) over five years to plant 1.2m acres of jatropha across India and research the crop's viability as a biofuel. If successful, the government would aim for 30m acres of jatropha plantations while looking for ways to privatise cultivation.
But large-scale cultivation of the trees is unproven and it remains to be seen whether either pongamia or jatropha can be commercialised. Cultivating suitable varieties of the trees, certifying seeds and clarifying who owns fallow land are some of the challenges.
Some states are charging ahead. The poor, landlocked state of Chattisgarh aims to plant 380,000 acres of jatropha on fallow land and eventually to run all government vehicles on biodiesel.