It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the cynics might begin having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to standard kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the project.

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

One really motivating development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers consequently preventing a rate spiral. Not so long back, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed blessing certainly if some people ended up starving simply to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.