Jatropha, Challenges for a New Energy Crop (PDF)

Mulpuri Sujatha graduated in Plant Sciences from the University of Hyderabad (UoH), India. She has a Ph.D. in Genetics from Osmania University (OU), Hyderabad, and has worked on intergeneric and interspecific affinities between Ricinus and Jatropha. Dr. Sujatha is a versatile researcher, adopting conventional and modern tools for the improvement of oilseed crops encompassing the areas of genetics, tissue culture and biotechnology. Her achievements include the development stable male sterile lines in safflower, sunflower and niger; optimization of tissue culture and genetic transformation protocols; development of transgenic events in castor for foliage feeders and sunflower for resistance to necrosis disease; use of molecular markers in diversity analysis and tagging of desirable traits in sunflower (downy mildew, fertility restoration) and Jatropha (non-toxicity). Dr. Sujatha has also carried out pioneering work on Jatropha with regard to tissue culture, genetic diversity analysis of native and world collections and interspecific hybridization, which have provided valuable leads for genetic enhancement of J. curcas.Nicolas Carels graduated in Agronomy in Belgium and completed a PhD in Plant Pathology (FUSAGx, Gembloux) prior to working as a scientist on the elaboration of the first genetic map of sugarbeet at the end of the 1980's (ICIseed-SES, Belgium). He then moved to Paris (IJM, CNRS, France) where he completed a second PhD on the genome organization in plants. He continued his work on genomics in Italy (SZN, Naples) and Spain (INTA-CAB, Madrid, Torrejon de Ardoz) before moving to Brazil (Bahia, Ilhéus, UESC), where he contributed to the application of bioinformatics and genomics to the improvement of Cacao and Rubber Tree for resistance to fungal diseases. His initial investigations on Jatropha covered the measurement of the genome size by flow cytometry and the application of reverse genetics to detect QTLs for oil production with the purpose of