Use of inadequate data and methodological errors lead to an overestimation of the water footprint of Jatropha curcas
- 25 August 2009
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 106 (34) , E91
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0906788106
Abstract
In their recent article, Gerbens-Leenes et al. (1) calculated the water footprint (WF), the amount of water required to produce 1 GJ of energy, of several bioenergy crops. The water footprint of Jatropha curcas was remarkably high (8.6 times higher than the WF of sugar beet, the most water-efficient crop), which may have serious implications for its future management. However, we strongly believe that jatropha's WF was dramatically overestimated because of inappropriate use of data and methodological errors. For their calculations of jatropha's WF, the authors relied on a nonpeer-reviewed report (2), providing data of the total available water in plantations, summing rainfall and irrigation, but not of evapotranspiration, required to calculate …Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- The water footprint of bioenergyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009
- Plant–water relationships and growth strategies of Jatropha curcas L. seedlings under different levels of drought stressJournal of Arid Environments, 2009
- Jatropha bio-diesel production and useBiomass and Bioenergy, 2008