Breadfruit

• 1. Introduction

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  A single breadfruit tree can hand a household 200 or more grapefruit-sized fruits in one season, and it asks for very little care in return. That makes Artocarpus altilis one of the highest-yielding food plants known. It belongs to Moraceae, the mulberry and jackfruit family, and today it is grown in 90 countries.

  Artocarpus altilis has been carried across oceans, fermented in pits, carved into canoes and woven into myth. Its name comes from a plain comparison with baked bread, but the plant itself is far less plain. This documentary asks where the tree came from, who first carried it across the sea, and why so many cultures built their cooking and their stories around it.

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• 2. The Voyagers' Tree

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  DNA fingerprinting studies point to the breadnut, Artocarpus camansi, as the seeded wild ancestor of breadfruit. Wild breadnut is native to New Guinea, the Maluku Islands and the Philippines. People in Polynesia domesticated it and bred it selectively, and the result was the mostly seedless Artocarpus altilis.

  Around 3,000 years ago, Austronesian voyagers carried breadfruit into Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, where it had never grown wild. Botanists group it with the canoe plants, the crops that these sailors packed for the journey.

  Micronesia holds a clue to the routes they took. Breadfruit there shows signs of hybridizing with the local Artocarpus mariannensis, known as dugdug, while most Polynesian and Melanesian cultivars show no such mixing. Researchers read this as evidence that Micronesia was settled separately, in two migration events that later overlapped in eastern Micronesia.

  The Lapita people, thought to have traveled from Melanesia to many Polynesian islands, appear in the breadfruit evidence too. Many hybrids and cultivars are spread widely across the Pacific, yet they cannot disperse over long distances by themselves. Humans must have moved them. Scientists combined molecular dating of these plants with anthropological data, and the results support a west-to-east migration. Every seedless grove in the Pacific therefore marks a place where someone once planted a cutting.

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• 3. Anatomy of a Tree

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  A mature breadfruit tree can reach 26 m in height. Its large, thick leaves are cut deeply into pinnate lobes.

  The same tree carries both male and female flowers. The male flowers emerge first, and the female flowers follow shortly afterward. The female flowers grow into capitula that can be pollinated just three days later. Fruit bats do most of the pollinating, although cultivated varieties set fruit without it.

  Each fruit is a compound false fruit that develops from the swollen perianth of 1,500 to 2,000 flowers. Their traces remain visible on the skin as hexagon-like disks. Fruits are usually round, oval or oblong, and they weigh between 0.25 and 6.0 kg. In the South Pacific a tree yields 50 to 150 fruits a year, and output differs between wet and dry areas.

  The jackfruit, Artocarpus heterophyllus, is the breadfruit's closest lookalike. The breadnut can be told apart by spinier fruits packed with many seeds. The Micronesian dugdug has dark green, elongated fruits with darker yellow flesh, and its leaves are whole or only shallowly lobed.

  Below 650 m is where the tree grows best, though it has been found at 1550 m. It prefers neutral to alkaline soils with a pH of 6.1-7.4, and it copes with coral sands and saline soils. As an ultra-tropical species, it needs temperatures between 16 and 38 C.

  Seedless trees are multiplied from suckers that rise from the surface roots. Growers can injure the roots or prune the tree to encourage more suckers. Cuttings go into plastic bags of soil, peat and sand, stay in shade and receive liquid fertilizer, and they move into full sun once roots form. For large-scale planting, growers prefer root cuttings about 2 in thick and 9 in long. Rooting can take up to 5 months, and the young trees are ready to plant at 2 ft. A tree that can be multiplied from cuttings can be carried, and in the 18th century someone set out to carry it halfway around the world.

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• 4. Banks and the Caribbean

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  Joseph Banks was in Tahiti in 1769 as part of the expedition commanded by Captain James Cook. He would later become president of the Royal Society, and what he saw there stayed with him.

  By the late 18th century, British colonial administrators and plantation owners wanted a cheap, high-energy food for the enslaved people in their colonies. They called for breadfruit to be brought to the Caribbean.

  As Royal Society president, Banks put up a cash bounty and a gold medal for anyone who could deliver it. He also lobbied successfully for a British naval expedition. A first voyage to the South Pacific to collect the plants ended in failure.

  In 1791, William Bligh commanded a second expedition. It gathered seedless breadfruit plants in Tahiti and transported them to St. Helena in the Atlantic, and to St. Vincent and Jamaica in the West Indies.

  British and French navigators both introduced a few Polynesian seedless varieties to Caribbean islands in those late 18th-century years. The 1791 landings were only the first: the tree was later planted widely across lowland Central America and northern South America.

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• 5. Taste and Preservation

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  The word breadfruit entered use in the 17th century, coined for the bread-like texture of the fruit when baked. Cooked, a moderately ripe fruit tastes potato-like, or like freshly baked bread. The tree has hundreds of varieties, and its common names change with geography.

  In a 100 g reference amount, raw breadfruit supplies 103 calories. It is 71% water, 27% carbohydrates and 1% protein, with negligible fat. Vitamin C reaches 32% of the Daily Value, and potassium reaches 16%.

  Most varieties bear fruit throughout the year. Both ripe and unripe fruit are used in the kitchen, although unripe fruit must be cooked first. Cooks roast, bake, fry or boil it. The fruit can also be dried and ground into flour, and the seeds can be cooked and eaten.

  Heavy crops arrive at certain times of year, so preserving the harvest has always been a problem. One traditional answer, known throughout Oceania, is to bury peeled and washed fruit in a leaf-lined pit. Over several weeks it ferments into a sour, sticky paste. Stored this way it can last a year or more, and some pits have reportedly yielded edible contents more than 20 years after burial.

  In French Polynesia, archaeologists treat the remains of pit-like formations as clues to prehistoric settlement. Scattered stones around them are presumed to be the remnants of the pit linings.

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• 6. Kitchens of Asia and Islands

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  In Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, seedless breadfruit is called sukun. Cooks turn it into fritters, and these are sold as snacks and street food.

  The Philippines has its own names for the fruit, including rimas in Tagalog and kolo in the Visayan languages. It is also called kamansi, a name it shares with its seeded relative, and cooks use it much as they use jackfruit in savory dishes. Immature fruit most often appears as ginataang rimas, cooked in coconut milk.

  Hawaiian cooks call the fruit ulu. In poi, the staple traditionally made from mashed taro root, mashed ulu can replace the taro or be added to it. The result is poi ulu.

  Sri Lanka serves breadfruit as a curry of coconut milk and spices, or simply boiled as a famous main meal. Boiled breadfruit often comes with scraped coconut or a coconut sambol of red chili powder, salt and a dash of lime juice. A traditional sweet snack called rata del petti is made from finely sliced, sun-dried chips fried in coconut oil and dipped in treacle or sugar syrup.

  In India, breadfruit fritters are a local delicacy in coastal Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. They are called paatponnos or nirponnos in Konkani and kadachakka varuthath in Malayalam.

  Traditionally, Seychelles served breadfruit in place of rice, alongside the main dish. It was either boiled, as friyapen bwi, or grilled, as friyapen griye, when the whole fruit went into the wood fire used to cook the meal. Dessert is ladob friyapen, in which the fruit is boiled in coconut milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and a pinch of salt.

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• 7. Caribbean Tables

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  In Belize, the Mayan people call breadfruit masapan. Across the Caribbean, the same tree turns up under very different names and on very different plates.

  The Dominican Republic calls it buen pan, or good bread. Despite that name, breadfruit is not popular in Dominican cooking and is used mainly to feed pigs.

  Barbados boils breadfruit with salted meat and mashes it with butter to make breadfruit coucou. It is usually eaten alongside saucy meat dishes.

  In Haiti, steamed breadfruit is mashed into tonmtonm. It is served with an okra sauce that may include fish and crab.

  Trinidad and Tobago boils the fruit, then fries it and serves it with saucy meat dishes such as curried duck.

  Jamaicans boil breadfruit in soups or roast it on the stovetop, in the oven or over wood coal. They eat it with ackee and salt fish, the national dish. Ripe fruit goes into salads or is fried as a side dish.

  In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, roasted breadfruit served with fried jackfish is the national dish. Cooks also boil it in soups and fry it. Ripe fruit becomes the base for drinks, cakes and ice cream.

  Puerto Rico knows the fruit as mapén, panapén or pana. The short name pana is often used for breadnut instead, whose seeds are traditionally boiled, peeled and eaten whole. Breadfruit is often boiled and served with sauteed bacalao, olive oil and onions. As tostones, about 1-inch chunks are fried, lightly flattened and fried again. Mofongo de panapén mashes the fried fruit with olive oil, garlic, broth and chicharrón, and rellenos de panapén is the breadfruit version of papa rellena.

  Puerto Rican cooks also mash boiled ripe and unripe fruit with milk and butter for pastelón de panapén, a dish like lasagna. Desserts include flan de pana, a breadfruit custard, and cazuela, a crustless pie of ripe breadfruit, spices, raisins, coconut milk and sweet potatoes. Breadfruit flour sold across the island goes into bread, pastries, cookies, pancakes, waffles, crepes and almojábana. Every year on the last Friday of August, Barrio Mariana in Humacao holds a Breadfruit Festival where traditional and new breadfruit dishes are sold.

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• 8. Wood, Latex and Lore

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  A specific gravity of 0.27 makes breadfruit wood remarkably light, and it resists both termites and shipworms. Pacific Islanders used it for structures and for outrigger canoes. In Samoan architecture it was among the most valuable timbers for building traditional houses. Wood pulp can even be made into paper, known as breadfruit tapa.

  Sticky white latex runs through every part of the tree. At harvest it stains the surface of the fruit, so proper methods drain the latex and dispose of it. The same sap has been used for glue, for caulk and even for chewing gum. Native Hawaiians used it to trap birds, whose feathers were made into cloaks.

  A Hawaiian myth traces the breadfruit to the sacrifice of the war god Kū. He chose to live secretly among mortals as a farmer, married and had children. When famine struck the island, he told his wife he could save the family but would have to leave them. At her word he sank into the ground until only the top of his head showed. His family kept watch there day and night, watering the spot with tears, until a small green shoot appeared. It grew quickly into a tall, leafy tree heavy with breadfruit. The tree has been known ever since as a symbol of abundance and famine relief.

  On Puluwat in the Caroline Islands, sacred yitang lore is organized into five categories: war, magic, meetings, navigation and breadfruit. In that context breadfruit is a figure of speech for knowledge.

  The world's largest collection of breadfruit varieties grows on a 10 acre plot outside Hana, on the isolated east coast of Maui. Botanist Diane Ragone built it over more than 20 years of travel to 50 Pacific islands.

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