Abstract
Soaring prices of fossil fuels, geo-political issues and environmental pollution associated with fossil fuel use has led to worldwide interest in the production and use of
bio-fuels. Both the developed and developing countries have developed a range of policies to encourage production of combustible fuels from plants that triggered public and private investments in bio-fuel crop research and development, and bio-fuels production. In this article, we discuss the potential benefits of bio-fuels in increasing the farmers’ incomes, reducing environment pollution, the crop options and research and development interventions required to generate feedstocks to produce bio-fuels to meet projected demand without compromising food/fodder security in developing countries.

B. V. S. Reddy : A. Ashok Kumar : S. P. Wani : T. K. Sreedevi
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT),
Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India
e-mail: [email protected] 

S. Ramesh
University of Agricultural Sciences (GKVK) Bangalore, Karnataka, India 

R. Ortiz
Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT), El Batan, Mexico 

H. Ceballos
Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), Cali, Colombia