It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find viable options to standard kerosene and these so far appear to come down to various types of biofuel.

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

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

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

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

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

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the move far 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 vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted too much 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 undoubtedly if some people ended up starving just to please another person's green qualifications.