It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could start having a dig at business airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foods.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic specialists for the job.

The most recent airline to start exploring with brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging advancement has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food customers therefore avoiding a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a combined blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy another person's green credentials.