It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at industrial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to bring out research study and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the task.

The current airline company to begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating development has been the move far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers consequently avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to satisfy another qualifications.