The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) advised that the energy crop Jatropha has seeds which can produce bio-diesel, which is less polluting than fossil diesel, and can be used to light lamps.

It can also be used as cooking fuel and thereby help in improving the financial conditions of the poor farmers, especially in the dry areas. The Jatropha curcas has a reasonably good growth in dry areas and on degraded soil.

The cultivation of jatropha is also advantageous to women for cooking on stoves which run on jatropha oil. This method is healthier and less polluting than the traditional biomass fuel-run stoves.

However, FAO said that the jatropha is still a wild plant and needs to be developed into a commercial crop.

Nevertheless, Jatropha has the potential to eventually turn into a high-yielding crop and can be productive even on degraded and salty soils in dry areas.

In contrast to other chief biofuel crops, like maize, jatropha is not a food crop and can thus be cultivated on marginal and degraded lands where food crops normally do not grow.