BASIC Associates: Jatropha, a Feedstock Needing Improvement

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Jatropha, a Feedstock Needing Improvement

By Daniela Sciaky, Ph.D.

SG Biofuels in August 2010 announced the completion of the Jatropha curcas L. sequence and this month announced development of proprietary Jatropha hybrid seed technology. Investors may question the significance of these two announcements in light of the supposed advantages of Jatropha. The surge to use this “wonder” plant for biofuel production has led to a sudden rash of decisions without considering how well an unimproved plant such as Jatropha will respond to plantation growth in suboptimal conditions. SG Biofuels and D1 Oils are just two of the companies seeking to improve Jatropha for plantation growth and for other characteristics such as oil yield using conventional technology and biotechnology.

Jatropha curcas L., a non-edible shrub, is considered to be a drought tolerant plant capable of growing on arid wastelands with little input. Under these conditions Jatropha is still able to yield up to 300 gallons of oil per acre. Based on these characteristics large numbers of Jatropha plantations have been established in order to produce oil for biofuel production and animal feed.

However Jatropha cultivation on a plantation scale has not been totally successful. One reason for failure of these plantations may be that Jatropha is not naturally found in regions with arid and semi-arid climate conditions nor is it found in regions of less than 944 mm annual precipitation. Recent experiments have also shown that productivity of Jatropha decreases with drought. However Jatropha, unlike many other crops, is able to recover from drought stress.

SG Biofuels has established a Genetic Resource Center to help the company generate hybrids in a manner similar to what has been successful for corn. SG Biofuels, with Life Technologies, has also completed the sequence of Jatropha. The sequence will be used to identify traits to improve fruit yield, pest resistance, flowering capabilities, soil adaption, uniformity and harvesting.

D1 Oils is identifying optimal sites for Jatropha cultivation by examining day length, water availability, latitude, altitude and land use by other crops. Other factors, including plant density, water and fertilizer use, land preparation, intercropping, pest and diseases, pruning regimens and harvesting time and techniques, are under examination. D1 Oils has also established a breeding program in order to develop varieties suitable for plantation cultivation around the world.

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About BASIC

Unlike other investor services, BASIC Associates focuses not on the financials, but on the science behind various R&D initiatives in bioproducts. Sound science, after all, is the ultimate driver of profitability in the industry. We believe that a superior understanding of the science behind the business model reduces uncertainty and risk and allows for better decision-making by investors and stakeholders.

The principals at BASIC Associates use their doctoral training, coupled with years of experience researching and writing about biofuels, biochemicals, and other bioproducts, to provide an accessible science-oriented analysis of companies and projects in this growing market.

Meet the Principals

Robin J. Johnson, Ph.D.

Dr. Johnson is a cofounder of BASIC Associates. She previously worked as a curator for Garbrook Knowledge Resources, which she joined in March of 2007. Prior to joining Garbrook, she was a Scientist at Genstruct, a systems biology company that creates computer models of biological pathways, and a curator/editor at Incyte and later Biobase, working on the Proteome BiKnowledge Library. (Proteome was a successful knowledge company that provided comprehensive annotation of the proteomes of a variety of organisms, including humans.) As an assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine from 1985-2003, Dr. Johnson taught Medical School and did research in the field of cellular neurobiology. She has numerous publications to her credit. Dr. Johnson received her B.S. in Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and her Ph.D. in Anatomy from Boston University. Her postdoctoral studies of viral infection in the nervous system were performed at Yale University School of Medicine Section of Cell Biology.

Daniela Sciaky, Ph.D.

Dr. Sciaky, a cofounder of BASIC Associates, is a scientific expert in plant biotechnology and biofuels and bioproduct processes. From 2006 to 2010, she was the senior content expert at Garbrook Knowledge Resources, where she contributed her expertise to the gathering and organization of biofuels and bioproduct information. From 1998 to 2006, she curated the scientific literature on a wide variety of topics, including plant and yeast molecular biology, helping to develop content for the Proteome databases. She has also held research positions with Children's Hospital of Cincinnati and Albany Medical College and faculty and research positions at the University of Cincinnati and Brookhaven National Laboratory. During the course of her career, Dr. Sciaky has served as a peer reviewer for the US Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy, in addition to reviewing papers for the The Plant Cell, Biochemistry, Planta, Nucleic Acids Research, Plasmid, Bio/Technology and BioScience journals.

Dr. Sciaky received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Genetics from Washington State University and her B.S. in Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She did post-doctoral research at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. She has presented at numerous scientific conferences and is well published in plant disease and natural systems as well as other fields.

Henrique Oliveira, MBA

Henrique, a cofounder of BASIC Associates, worked as a curator for Garbrook Knowledge Resources from 2008 to 2010. A citizen of both Brazil and the United States, he received his MBA in Finance in 2008 from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was awarded a fellowship by the University’s William Davidson Institute to conduct research on Brazil’s 35-year experience with biofuels. As a Fellow of the Institute, Henrique spent several months in 2007 touring biofuel facilities in Brazil with Tom MacDonald, a senior researcher with the California Energy Commission and the head of MacDonald Associates, a boutique consulting firm specializing in alcohol transportation fuel.

Prior to joining Garbrook, Henrique worked as a consultant for Hart Energy’s Global Biofuels Center. He has extensive business experience in Brazil and has authored a number of reports on the country's biofuels industry, which, because of its size and depth, impacts alternative energy initiatives worldwide. Henrique has also written editorials on the Brazilian ethanol and sugar industry for various publications.