"Jatropha curcus" sounds like it might be the name of a character -- or of a spell -- in a Harry Potter book.

Pronounced "jat-RO-fa CUR-cus," it's actually the name of a tropical bush that produces seeds the size of walnuts.

When crushed, those seeds can yield more than one-third of their weight in oil. Members of a nonprofit organization based in the North Hills believe that oil offers a way to produce an environmentally friendly fuel. They also hope Jatropha cultivation and processing will help pull small farmers in Uganda out of poverty.

The nonprofit is called CEED, pronounced, fittingly, like "seed." It has undertaken a pilot project in Uganda to identify and collect seeds from the most productive varieties of Jatropha curcus.

CEED members hope that within a few years, the best seeds -- those that produce plants yielding the most oil -- can be distributed to farmers around the northwestern Ugandan village of Wambabya.

"It wouldn't replace a food crop, and it can be raised in very poor soil," said Worth Helms, president of CEED's board and a retired insurance executive living in Franklin Park. "The Jatropha curcus project has the potential to become self-sustaining."

CEED's full name is the Christian East African and Equatorial Development Trust. Its volunteers have been working since 1999 to identify, develop and maintain income-generating projects in poor countries.

Raising and marketing Ugandan Gold Premium Coffee was the agency's first undertaking. Donations from patrons in the United States were used to lease 100 acres in Uganda on which a 37-acre coffee farm was started in 2000. Startup funds also were used to plant coffee bushes, pay wages and provide health care for laborers. The farm employs about 37 full-time workers and up to 150 pickers during the coffee bean harvest, which runs November through February.

With gross revenues of more than $125,000 last year, the farm has become self-sufficient.

Building on the success of the coffee project, CEED members have sought to identify similar economic development projects.

Cultivation of Jatropha curcus has been undertaken in India, which seeks to produce 20 percent of its diesel fuel through plant sources. About 500,000 hectares, or 1.25 million acres, of the hardy bush have been planted there, according to a recent edition of The Economist magazine.

Engineer Graham Hodgetts, a member of CEED's board, said several factors make biodiesel that is refined from Jatropha oil a "green" fuel, or one that is friendlier to the environment.

Like all green plants, Jatropha curcus removes atmospheric carbon dioxide -- one of the main gases linked to global warning -- as it grows. That makes plant-based biodiesel carbon-dioxide neutral because the growing plant removes as much of the gas from the atmosphere as it creates when it is burned, Mr. Hodgetts said.

The tropical bush is drought resistant and can thrive in poor soils that cannot support food crops, he said. Since oil from the plant is poisonous, using it in diesel fuel does not divert potential food stocks to industrial use.

Uganda is a landlocked country in east Africa about twice the size of Pennsylvania. Its population is about 30 million and most people are involved in some form of agriculture. Coffee has long been its leading export.

"The problem is that much of the coffee was of relatively poor quality," Mr. Hodgetts said. CEED's farm emphasized organic growing methods, hand picking beans and sun drying.

Some of the crop is sold to brokers. The rest is roasted by O'Neill Coffee Co. in West Middlesex, Mercer County. Those beans are mixed with Colombian Arabica beans to produce several kinds of coffee sold under the name Ugandan Gold.

All profits from the coffee sale have been combined with new donations to support well drilling in the region and construction of a clinic in Hoima, a larger community about 30 miles from the coffee farm.

The medical clinic soon will have its own operating facility. Donated medical equipment has been loaded into a container and soon will be shipped to Africa, Mr. Hodgetts said.

The clinic sends a medical team to CEED's farm to care for workers and their families, he said. Major medical problems include malaria, intestinal worms, hypertension, diabetes and respiratory ailments linked to the extensive use of wood fires.

CEED had its roots in the "Encounter Uganda" mission effort begun about 10 years ago by members of Christ Church at Grove Farm in Ohio Township.

Mr. Hodgetts' wife, Eileen, is director of that program. CEED, which is not linked to any church, came out of that initiative. "The objective is to concentrate help in a specific area but with recipients knowing that we will be leaving and they must take care of themselves," he said.

Coffee growing was a good initial project for CEED and Ugandan farmers, members said. Raising Jatropha curcus would help farmers diversify and reduce the dangers of crop failure.

Much biodiesel comes from soybean oil, and that raises ethical issues. Turning soybeans into biodiesel is "taking food from poor people's tables to put into rich people's fuel tanks," Mr. Hodgetts said.

Jatropha curcus has the potential to produce about 250 gallons of oil per acre, about four times as much as soybeans, he said. Its dense root structure also can hold soil in place, even after it has gone dormant in times of drought.

One problem with vegetable-based biodiesel is that it thickens as temperatures approach freezing, he said. Freezing temperatures, however, are rarely a problem in places like Uganda, which sits on the Equator, he said.

An experiment done at Hoima suggested that fuel made from Jatropha curcus oil need not be combined with other materials, he said. Testers tried running a diesel engine with fuel mixtures ranging from 25 percent to 100 percent Jatropha oil and found no differences in operation, he said.

Ugandan biofuel would be refined and sold domestically. Traditional diesel fuel must arrive by sea at the Kenyan port of Mombasa and then be shipped about 800 miles inland to Uganda. The resulting fuel costs as much as $8 per gallon, almost all of which leaves the country.

"If we can produce and sell biodiesel for $7, all that money will stay in the local economy," Mr. Hodgetts said. Jatropha curcus oil, which burns cleanly, also can be used in lamps.

Mr. Hodgetts, of Baden, is president of Fidelity Flight Simulation on Pittsburgh's North Side.

Seven full-time workers in the Jatropha curcus "mother garden" will nurture and keep records on which plants are yielding the most oil.

CEED's 10-acre test farm is on another portion of the same 100-acre tract on which it set up the coffee farm. The land has been leased from the Church of Uganda, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The origins of the CEED projects began more than 20 years ago when now-retired Anglican Bishop Wilson Turamanya, who served Uganda's Bunyoro-Kitara diocese, was studying at Trinity Seminary in Ambridge.

In 1984, he became friends with Graham and Eileen Hodgetts and urged them for many years to visit him in Uganda, a trip they made in 1998.

Mr. Helms and his wife Jan were part of a missionary group that traveled to Africa with Mr. and Mrs. Hodgetts a year later. Mr. Helms has since visited Uganda eight times.

"We looked at a number of business options for Uganda that could be self-sustaining -- raising tilapia, macadamia nuts and coffee," Mr. Helms said. "Coffee seem to make the most sense."

The venture was not without its obstacles in the early days.

Young coffee plants need to be mulched during the dry season, he said. But in January 2001, CEED didn't have the money to pay for materials.

"We could only hope for more rain and pray that the coffee would take care of itself," he said.

Disaster loomed when efforts by an adjoining farmer to clear his land by burning -- a common practice in Uganda -- got out of control and spread toward the coffee farm.

"It was something of a miracle," Mr. Helms recalled. The wildfire burned to the edge of the farm but no farther. "There was no mulch to feed it," he said. "If there had been, we would have lost the whole farm."

"There was a lesson there," he said. "When you don't get what you want, be at peace with it. There may be a good reason you are not getting it."