Thevetia peruviana belongs to the order apocynales of Apocynaceae family. It is a native of tropical America: especially Mexico, Brazil and West Indies and has naturalized in tropical regions worldwide. In the native countries it is believed to be more than 2000 years old.( Azam et al., 2005) It is known as Yellow oleander (nerium), gum bush, bush milk, exile tree in India, Cabalonga in Puerto Rico, ahanaiin Guyana, olomi ojo by Yorubas in Nigeria. Inspite of the high oil content (67%) of its kernel (Azam et al., 2005) and favourable protein content (37%) in the oil cake, (Ibiyemi et al., 2002) it has remained only an ornamental, fencing or wasteland plant. The plant is an evergreen perennial shrub reaching a height of 4.5 to 6m with deep green linear sword-shaped leaves and funnel shaped (yellow, white or pinkish yellow coloured) flowers. The plant starts flowering one and a half year after planting and after that it blooms thrice a year (Balusamy and Marappan, 2007). Thevetia peruviana plants produce more than 400-800 fruits yearly depending on the rainfall and plant age (Ibiyemi et al., 2002). Almost all parts of the plant are poisonous and bear white coloured latex. The number of kernels per fruit and the oil yield are significantly different among geographical locations. The plant has annual seeds yield of 52.5 t ha-1 and about 1750litres of oil can be obtained from a hectare of waste land (Balusamy and Marappan, 2007). Its kernel oil has a very good thermal stability, (Ibiyemi et al., 1995) and thus has a potential for various uses, ESPECIALLY, BIODIESEL
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