The Jatropha Curcas is a drought resistant oleaginous bushy shrub/tree belongs to the family of Euphorbiaceae and its oily seeds can produce 5–10 times of oil that is got from the common vegetable oil sources like soyabean and corn. One hectare of Jatropha plantation can produce around 500 gallons of biodiesel per year from its physic nuts along with more than 3500 kilograms of waste biomass.

Rapid increase in the scarcity of fossil fuel has caused an eventual drive to find alternative and renewable sources of fuel from common vegetable oils like soybean, corn, etc., Recently, oil from the seeds of the jatropha fruit has been converted to JC biodiesel, which can be directly used in diesel engines. Jatropha Curcas has now arisen as a very good source of plant based biodiesel source, with more than 32 percentange of oil content in its dicot seed with white cotyledons inside the dark brown coloured testa.

Curcas is one among the 175 members of the Jatropha genus. The plant, seeds and oil of this biodiesel crop are non-edible and it is considered to be poisonous to some degree, which keeps of the cattle from it. In olden days, it is mostly used as live fencing crop due to the toxic nature of this plant.

The oil which is obtained by crushing the Seeds of Jatropha Curcas, with the help of an expeller is then subjected to a process called as trans-esterification in which the triglycerides are converted into methyl esters to get the biodiesel and the by-products separately.

For more info, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas