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

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and legislation, the race is on to find viable alternatives to conventional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.

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

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to perform research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the task.

The current airline to begin explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

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