Samoan Breadfruit Makes a Splash in the Caribbean KAUAI, Hawaii -- Can a single species of tree significantly reduce hunger, unemployment and deforestation in the tropics? Researchers and scientists behind a surge in breadfruit activity think so.
Photo: Dr. Diane Ragone, director of the Breadfruit Institute, holds a flat of tiny Ma'afala breadfruit trees before shipping overseas. Credit:Jon Letman/IPS
By Jon Letman, IPS
Over the last decade, a handful of nonprofits and NGOs have
accelerated efforts to test, grow and distribute breadfruit trees
with the idea that this versatile, nutritious, fast-growing member of
the mulberry family has enormous untapped potential to improve food
security and local ecosystems.
Breadfruit proponents from Hawaii to British Columbia, the U.S.
Midwest, Central America and Europe have stepped up efforts to expand
the tree's presence in the Caribbean.
Breadfruit, a staple in the Pacific Islands for thousands of years,
has been popular in the Caribbean for over 200 years. What's
different about the trees being introduced today is that they are a
Samoan variety called Ma'afala (mah-ah-fala), previously unknown in
this part of the world.
Ma'afala was selected as optimal for mass propagation and
distribution because it has the highest protein and mineral nutrition
(iron, potassium, zinc) of 94 varieties studied, and is widely
considered one of the tastiest of varieties. All the Ma'afala grown
and distributed in the Caribbean today originates from the collection
at the Breadfruit Institute, part of the Hawaii-based
National
Tropical Botanical Garden.
Breadfruit Institute director Dr. Diane Ragone, who manages the
world's largest and most diverse breadfruit collection on Maui and
Kauai islands, partners with Dr. Susan Murch, a chemistry professor
at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagan.
Ragone began collecting breadfruit varieties for conservation and
research in the mid-1980s and has worked with Murch to develop micro-
propagation protocols for elite varieties that are then mass-
propagated by U.S.-Germany-based Global Breadfruit. The tiny Ma'afala
trees are then purchased by organisations which introduce the plants
where they are most needed ― in places like Jamaica, Honduras and
Haiti.
More jobs, cleaner water and better food
One organisation encouraging the growth and consumption of Ma'afala
is the Agro-forestry Regional Nursery (ARN) Foundation of Haiti. ARN
works on the premise that local food security, employment and healthy
watersheds and forests are interrelated.
With the capacity to grow one million trees per year, the foundation
aims to improve the condition of Haiti's watersheds, nine out of 10
of which ARN co-founder James Kishlar says are polluted by humans and
animals and the effects of deforestation. Including breadfruit as
part of a suite of food-producing trees like mango, avocado, citrus
and banana has environmental benefits while providing much-needed
food and jobs.
By adding Ma'afala to Haiti's crop base, ARN aims to increase
agricultural diversity and extend fruit-bearing periods since
different varieties produce throughout the year.
"Diversity is what we're trying to get back to, not monoculture,"
says Kishlar.
Another nonprofit distributing Ma'afala is the Chicago-based Trees
That Feed Foundation (TTFF) which is distributing breadfruit
trees to
school, hospitals, orphanages and for use in public spaces in
Jamaica.
TTFF works closely with the Jamaican Ministry of Agriculture, which
receives the tiny trees upon arrival in the country and transports
them to a nursery where they are grown out before being distributing
to independent farmers who can receive up to 25 trees at no cost.
In Haiti, TTFF has formed an alliance with a Port-au-Prince orphanage
which is growing trees in a nursery until they are large enough to be
given to partners. Since 2009, Trees That Feed has shipped over
12,000 Ma'afala trees, almost 3,000 to Haiti in this year alone.
As more trees bear fruit, founder and chairperson Mary McLaughlin
expects commercial farmers who can afford them to purchase trees and
help increase interest and demand.
But breadfruit, which is easy to grow and remarkably prolific - a
single tree can easily yield 200 kg or more of food a year - has a
short shelf life. Mature fruit must be consumed quickly and during
fruit season there can be a glut.
Gluten-free without the glut
One way to address this is by drying and milling breadfruit for flour
which is gluten-free and can be preserved for later use in secondary,
value-added food products.
The flour, which has a shelf-life measured in years, can be used for
breads, cakes, porridges, and other baked goods, says Dr. Camille
George, an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas' (UST)
School of Engineering. George is also a board member with Compatible
Technology International (CTI), a Minnesota-based nonprofit that
designs and distributes simple technologies that can be used to fight
hunger in remote and rural communities.
Currently UST and CTI are distributing their own breadfruit
processing equipment for producing flour in Haiti and elsewhere.
George says, "I'm trying to come up with new, innovative ideas of how
to engineer for the majority of the world that really has been
neglected by mainstream engineering."
Trees That Feed has begun purchasing grinders and shredders designed
by CTI and will help establish "factories in a box" that can be set
up almost anywhere.
"We feel very strongly at Trees That Feed that we have to lead the
way in every aspect," McLaughlin says. "We are generating excitement,
making people want to plant breadfruit trees, helping feed people,
create jobs and benefit the environment."
By advancing interest in and use of breadfruit flour, McLaughlin
says, there's more need for harvesting breadfruit and growing more
trees. She sees a bright future for breadfruit in the Caribbean.
So does UBC's Murch who thinks breadfruit is already beyond a tipping
point. With the in-vitro Ma'afala breadfruit on the market and being
circulated around the world (in 2011 one thousand Ma'afala saplings
were hand-delivered to Ghana), the number of trees, the desirability
of growing those trees, and a broader awareness of breadfruit as an
under-utilised crop, not just in the Caribbean, but around the
tropical world, is accelerating greatly.
A second Samoan breadfruit variety - Ulu fiti - has already gone
through virus screening and field testing protocols with memorandums
of understanding established between interested parties. Next comes
distribution and educating the public about the environmental,
social, dietary and culinary benefits of growing, eating and selling
breadfruit in its various forms.
Greater interest and understanding of the trees, the Breadfruit
Institute's Ragone believes, means more breadfruit will be planted in
the ground and filling the kitchens and markets throughout the
tropical world and that, she says, can only be good.
Updated 07.06.2012
Published by: Magne Ove Varsi
|
|
Indigenous peoples rights 
"We are the Sami" films
