Satish Lele satish.lele@gmail.com

In case you are buying an existing plantation or investing in an existing plantation, you can work out the Jatropha oil yield for next few years. You can access the age of plantation with following method

• One year old : A sapling is pruned at top at the time of shifting it to Plantation from Nursery. A properly pruned sapling will have a main stem and 4 branches at the end of one year. These branches are pruned at the end of first year.

• Two years old : After proper first pruning 3 to 4 branches will emerge from every old branch. Hence the plant will have around 14 branches. These branches are pruned at the end of second year.

• Three or more years old : After proper second pruning 3 to 4 branches will emerge from every old branch. Hence the plant will have around 50 branches. Generally it is not pruned after third year and number of branches remain the same after third year.

Generally flowers and fruits grow at the end of each branch. More the branches, more number of fruits and seeds. On an average 25 to 50 fruits grow on each branch of tree. The weight of these seeds is 50 gms (25 fruits) to 100 gms. (50 fruits). You should count number of branches and number of fruits per branch for at lesast 100 plants, so that you can get fairly good idea about yield from plantation.
50 branches per plant are possible if the plant is 2 meters in diameter. In this case the distance between two plants should be 2m x 3m or 3m x 3m. This will result in 1,500 or 1,000 per hectare. (600 or 400 per acre.) Based on this, you can calculate seed yield per hectare or acre.
The oil content of seed is on an average around 30%. If it is extracted by screw type expeller, you can get 25% of oil and with solvent extraction plant it can be up to 30%. (Solvent extraction plant is viable if oil extraction capacity is more than 100 tons per day). Based on this, you can calculate Jatropha Oil yield per hectare or acre.

The Jatropha Tree should look like this