To establish a facile and feasible method to evaluate and control the quality of Jatropha curcus L. seed oil for biodiesel feedstock, Gas chromatographic (GC) fingerprint technology was introduced and employed. Initially, the chromatograms of the 13 oil samples from various plantation zones in Guizhou, China were obtained under optimized GC conditions. Ten common peaks were selected as the characteristic peaks for chemometrics, seven of which were identified and quantified by comparing with the standards. The mean chromatogram of S7 (n = 3) was selected as the reference spectrum for similarity analysis based on the influence of the fatty acid composition of the raw material on the fuel properties of resulting biodiesel. Furthermore, the result of SA was confirmed by hierarchical clustering analysis and principal component analysis. By this method, all samples can be classified into three groups. The similarity value of samples approaching 1.000 compared with sample 7 was indicative of the desired fuel properties of biodiesel, indicating the potential practical applications in the quality evaluation and control of biodiesel feedstock. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.