Toward Cleaner Skies: Evaluating Carinata as a Regenerative Feedstock

Abstract

Abstract Aviation accounts for nearly 4% of global warming once CO₂ and non-CO₂ effects are included (Lee et al., 2021), and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) can cut life-cycle emissions by more than 80% in existing aircraft and infrastructure (Ahmad et al., 2021). Current SAF relies largely on used cooking oil, which meets less than 8% of global jet-fuel demand (IEA Bioenergy, 2023), creating a need for scalable, non-edible oilseeds that do not compete with food or farmland. Brassica carinata (Carinata, or Ethiopian mustard) meets this need: a non-edible oilseed with high oil content suited to the HEFA pathway, yielding protein-rich defatted meal and biomass, and able to grow on marginal, saline land. This thesis presents the first field-validated assessment of Carinata under Egypt’s arid, saline conditions, examining whether it can be grown as a winter crop, how irrigation-water salinity affects agronomic and economic performance, whether combined seed-oil, defatted-meal, and biomass revenues make it viable, and what SAF it could supply nationally, including within date-palm alley systems. Two one-acre trials were conducted at Wadi El Natroun (≈2 dS/m) and Salheya (≈8–10 dS/m), combining agronomic measurement, benefit-cost and ten-year net-present-value modeling, scenario analysis, and Monte-Carlo simulation. Seed yields reached 2.59 and 1.96 t ha⁻¹, both above the 1.5 t ha⁻¹ benchmark; ten-year NPV ranged from USD 2,074–3,397 per acre (benefit-cost ratios of 1.33 and 1.38), and Monte-Carlo simulation returned a positive NPV in more than 99.8% of 100,000 simulated scenarios. Nationally, allocating 5% of Egypt’s estimated 26 million ha of saline-irrigable land at the Salheya yield of 1.96 t ha⁻¹ could produce roughly 730 million litres of SAF, about 68% of Egypt’s annual jet-fuel demand—while date-palm alley intercropping adds an estimated 67.6–246.2 million litres. These findings support further field trials, intercropping validation, and techno-economic evaluation within Egypt’s domestic SAF feedstock development pathway.