Evaluation of Plant Bio-Regulators (PBR’s) application on the fruit and seed yield of Jatropha curcas: A bio-fuel plant

Jatropha curcas is a drought tolerant, oil seed bearing shrub of family Euphorbiaceae, widely distributed in Central and South America, Africa, India and south East Asia.1,2 It is found growing in tropics and subtropics.3–5 Jatropha is a monoecious plant and flowers are unisexual, occasionally hermaphrodite flower also occur.5 There is a huge variation in seed yield of this plant (Figure 1). It varies from 0.1 to15 tonnes/ha/year.7 Different researchers have reported different amount of oil content ranging from 24% to 60 %.8–13 Low yield is the main constraint in successful utilization of this oil yielding plant as biodiesel feedstock.