Thursday, 2 June 2011

Jatropha A Plant With Environmental And Commercial Benefits Boon To Farmers

Jatropha A Plant With Environmental And Commercial Benefits Boon To Farmers
Jatropha is one of the rare plants, which has many useful ingredients beneficial to mankind. This plant contains 25 to 35 percent oil and can be used to produce bio-fuel crop, a means to sustain nature's greenery. In addition to being used as a biodiesel, Jatropha can also be used for good quality paper, cosmetics, toothpaste, balm ointments, and cough medicines. Hence, considering its manifold usages, the modern day agricultural scientists support the growth of Jatropha through ex-vitro means. Jatropha, to be grown in huge quantities was a challenging task, for many agriculturists. First of all, the propagation and transportation of the seedlings of Jatropha was expensive and time-consuming. The soil in which, it grows is low in productivity causing the plant to decay and have diseases and last but not the least, the Jatropha plant takes substantial time to adapt itself, to the new environment. However, due to advanced techniques in farming, like ex-vitro plantation, Jatropha has been successfully cultivated, as a biodiesel and biofuel crop. Many countries in Asia, where it is grown in large, are undertaking projects to cultivate Jatropha and reproduce it as a biodiesel. Jatropha seedlings can sustain drought and pests. Concern on global warming, excessive use of toxic gases, and dependency on foreign oil has led many governments of many countries to promote high cultivation of Jatropha. Many institutes are engaged to adopt means of developing, researching, and using the Jatropha seeds as biofuel crop. It is also an easy way to reduce man's dependency on fossil fuels. Jatropha, thus has been identified as an environmental crop. It proves beneficial by giving us biodiesel without interfering with the nature and clearing the trees in the forests. It is a multi-purpose crop and can be used in producing varied products ranging from cosmetics to medicines. Most of the agriculturists can benefit hugely and can increase their income by taking specific care in cultivating plants like Jatropha. Considering this, many institutes are helping the agriculturists to plant Jatropha and benefits, from the plantation propagation. Jatropha is gaining a huge popularity as a commercial crop, all over the world. Scientists are also, keen in concentrating their expertise and knowledge to improve, this plant and reap the benefits in farming. Seeing this, the agricultural experts advocated Jatropha propagation through assisted farming or ex-vitro method. This resolved, the challenges faced, earlier of planting it. The seedling procedure was made fast and inexpensive. The cost of transportation was minimized as the seedlings were planted in the nearby area of the plantation. Mother plants were selected from the same area, which did not require the seedlings to adapt themselves, thus saving time. The ex-vitro method adopted in the plant propagation scheme had root culturing as its basis, where the shoots were grown outside the field, in the glass vessels. The platelets grown from this were automatically, acclimatized in the green house. The seedlings were highly heterogeneous in character and hence, high level of propagation was possible. However, Jatropha has been found to contain certain toxics. Jatropha is an active author writing articles on Ex-vitro, marketing, business or adverting since very long time.