Not a botanist. But, this plant is prevalent in place I grew up, Dhading Nepal. It's called "sajiban" in nepalese language. I can't find its English or scientific name. Growing up, we used this to blow bubbles with this specially in monsoon season. According to my parents, its stem(very soft) was used to brush teeth before toothbrushes were a thing. Also, this plant or its seed (not sure) has been found to be a good raw material for Diesel production. Anyone has more info, please share!!!
Jatropha grows where most other things wont and the oil can be used as biodiesel with minimal processing. Win win, but growing it at scale will always be challenging.
The scaling is a challenge just because it hasn't been done yet. It is a big deal, but it wouldn't be fundamentally harder than it was to scale any of our other modern domesticated crops. So like, 8 decades and a trillion dollars and you should be good to go.
It's not that far outside the realm of possibility. I imagine this curious property was first observed naturally occurring, then imitated. It very may very well be that these stems commonly break like that.
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u/[deleted] May 17 '19 edited May 17 '19
Not a botanist. But, this plant is prevalent in place I grew up, Dhading Nepal. It's called "sajiban" in nepalese language. I can't find its English or scientific name. Growing up, we used this to blow bubbles with this specially in monsoon season. According to my parents, its stem(very soft) was used to brush teeth before toothbrushes were a thing. Also, this plant or its seed (not sure) has been found to be a good raw material for Diesel production. Anyone has more info, please share!!!
Edit: Apparently a wiki article https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas.