Field Trip: A Hawaiian Breadfruit Rev‘ULUtion

What even IS a breadfruit? How do you cook it? Why have Pacific Islanders grown it for so long? Can it solve world hunger? And what does it have to do with an infamous 18th century mutiny on the high seas? Pack your bags and hop aboard for not one but two island excursions to learn all about this rev-'ulu-tionary tropical staple. We start on a breezy Catalina Island dock to hear about the ethnobotany and ecobiology of breadfruit from Dr. Noa Kekuewa Lincoln before making our way to a farm tucked away on Hawaii’s Big Island for a tour from research assistant and PhD candidate Dolly Autufuga. On the itinerary: learning where it grows to planting one in your backyard to what’s that white sticky stuff and how do you make sure it doesn’t drop on your noggin? Let’s go Field Tripping.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

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• 0:34Speaker 01

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• 0:49Alie Ward?

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• 1:20Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, it's that friend who looks so good in hats they never don't wear a hat, Ali Ward. Let's take a field trip. Coincidentally, not coincidentally at all, this is Indigenous History Month here in the United States of colonized America, so we're heading to the Pacific to chat about foods of native populations and this movement to study and cultivate and reintroduce them. Last summer, I had this rare opportunity while doing a symposium for USC's Storytellers Program. I was teaching climate scientists about SciCom, and I got to meet some really lovely and super brilliant folks. And one of them told me that he was working in breadfruit. And knowing Jack about it, of course, I had to corner him on a boat dock on Catalina

• 2:03Alie Ward?

  Island to start asking him 1 million questions. One of these you may have, like me, is what is a breadfruit? Is it a- Baked good? Is it a sweet juicy thing on a vine? Is it a carb? Is it meat? What's happening here? And we'll dig in. But first, a quick primer is that the islands of Hawaii are right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's like 2,000 miles in either direction from Polynesia or North America. So about 1,000 years ago, folks from Polynesia cruised over on these big double-hulled canoes, guided by stars. They got to Hawaii. They were like, these volcano-mite islands are great. Let's live here. Let's bring our pigs, chickens, dogs, and foods like coconut and sugarcane and bananas and taro root and breadfruit.

• 2:48Alie Ward?

  So many centuries later, European explorers, we'll call them landed, then thought the islands were sweet and they were pretty. They liked the food. So the roasted breadfruit smelled like bread to these colonizers who called it breadfruit, although native Hawaiians had plenty of other names for it, which we'll hear about in a bit. But a botanist on Captain Cook's ship took some notes in praise of this food source. He wrote, "Their chiefst sustenance, breadfruit, is procured with no more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling it down. If a man should, in the course of his lifetime, plant ten such trees, which might take the labor of an hour, he would as completely fulfill his duty to his own as well as future

• 3:29Alie Ward?

  generations that we Europeans can do by toiling in the cold of winter to sow and in the heat of summer to reap the annual produce of our soil." They were like, wow, what are we doing? Working so hard for wheat when breadfruit is good and easy to grow and harvest? Anyway, back to this dock outside of LA, California, at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability's Storymaker Symposium of all these climate scientists. So this wonderful breadfruit expert studied environmental engineering at Yale and did doctoral research at Stanford University in biogeochemistry and social ecology. He's now a professor of indigenous crops and cropping systems at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

• 4:14Alie Ward?

  And he said, "If I were ever in Hawaii, he'd be happy to have me visit for a tour of his breadfruit farm." And so Later, already headed to Hawaii for some interviews and a visit to family, I stopped by. I met some breadfruit and some dogs and some other researchers in this world. And now, we have this scrumptious field trip on which to take you. So, all aboard, let's go breadfruit growing with ethnobotanist, indigenous ecobiologist, Dr. Noah Kekuewa Lincoln, and research assistant and soil scientist who's working on her PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Dali Altifuna, for this field trip, a Hawaiian breadfruit revolution.

• 5:12Alie Ward?

  So, to set the scene, I've been on Catalina Island outside of LA for several days with about a half a dozen climate scientists and science communicators, like Liz Neely and Ed Yon. And for days, we've all been sharing meals and telling campfire tales over glasses of wine, listening to stories of each other's lives, and just becoming pals. So, it's near the end of the trip, and now Noah and I are walking down a hill from the USC Wrigley Institute to the rocky shoreline, where a boat is docked, bobbing as it waits to take these climate scientists to a final dinner together. You have a minute while we walk? Yeah, we'll talk, we'll walk and talk.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Noah Lincoln, he, him.

• 5:52Alie Ward?

  And what's the genus and species of the breadfruit that you study the most?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Well, they're all the same species.

• 5:59Alie Ward?

  They are!

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Ardoecarpus altillis.

• 6:01Alie Ward?

  Okay. Are you an Ardoecarpologist? Have you looked up to see if that's an ology? You knew I was gonna be here. Did you look up earlier?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 6:09Alie Ward?

  You did not.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  I tend to lump it all under our broader work of ethnobotany, or ethnobiology, I guess we want ology in there.

• 6:15Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say, how dare you with the etony. You might have looked at me with an X. I can't do anything with that or ism. And a quick primer, breadfruit is in the fig family, and it's closely related to jackfruit. And there are three related species. And the genus artocarpus, which means in Greek, breadfruit, literally. So, most of the cultivated breadfruits descend from the species known as breadnut, which is native to the Papua New Guinea area. And in general, breadfruit is bigger than you might picture it, like some way as much as a watermelon. And they look like huge, green dragon eggs, though their varieties can be as tiny as an apple, some of them. Also, like blackberries, breadfruit are a compound fruit.

• 6:59Alie Ward?

  So each big old breadfruit is actually up to 2,000 flowers fused into one mega fruit, which is why it looks spiky or scaled, like lizard or, I suppose, dragon skin. Okay, breadfruit, what was the first time you ever ate it? Because you're born on Hawaii.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yes, so I mean, we had it as kids, you know, but pretty sparsely.

• 7:21Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  And probably been working on breadfruit for about 10 years now. And I would say one of the things that was an epiphany to me was how challenging it is, right, to change our personal habits, and particularly around the way we eat.

• 7:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  And so, you know, especially with our staple foods, they're our comfort foods, right?

• 7:41Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  We grew up on rice and transitioning to, you know, particularly our indigenous starches, of which breadfruit's one. It was a very challenging and deliberate switch that took a lot of years.

• 7:56Alie Ward?

  And staple foods are the ones that we tend to eat every day. And different cultures tend to lean toward their own staple foods. Think like wheat and rice and corn and millet and yam, potatoes, sweet potatoes. And according to the book, Thinking Like an Island: Navigating a Sustainable Future in Hawaii, before the Western colonization of Hawaii by whalers and missionaries, the hundreds of thousands of people on the Hawaiian islands were self-sufficient for food. But now, 85% of food is imported. So, breadfruit has held this important place in terms of staple foods. And Noah and his colleagues are bringing it back. And so, the first time you tried it, do you remember? Was it mixed in with something else you had? Was it? Was it fresh off a tree?

• 8:41Alie Ward?

  Can you eat it right off a tree or must it be cooked?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  You can. You know, breadfruit is a fruit. It ripens. It goes through stages. So unlike most of our staple foods like, you know, rice or potatoes, but it's diverse. You know, in its youngest stage, maybe about the size of a baseball, it's a lot like a vegetable.

• 9:01Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  You can pickle it. People make things that taste like artichoke hearts, basically.

• 9:05Alie Ward?

  Oh, yum.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  And then, you know, it matures. And that's it's, you know, basically at that point, it's a big potato on a tree. So that's when most people eat it. That's the stage I first had it. And it doesn't stick in your mind, per se. Like, nobody grabs a potato and tears into it and goes, yum! You know, no.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  You slather up sour cream and bacon and butter. And then it's, you know, takes on the flavor of what you're doing. But, you know, it's a staple. It's a starch. And in some cases is a little bland. But if you know what to do with it, it can be delicious.

• 9:38Alie Ward?

  We kept ambling toward the dock, where other scientists from the symposium had started to gather to board the boat to dinner. Does it take a while for the tree to mature in order to bear fruit? Or does it make fruit even when it's young?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  This is a lot of the work we're doing, kind of these basic agronomy questions. And so, for instance, we have a trial in Hawaii, spread out across the state in different habitats. You know, a sea spray habitat, a high wind habitat, a high elevation, cold temperature habitat. And we've seen fruit as young as 18 months. And we've seen trees take up to seven years to start producing. So it depends on your site, your environment, your variety you're growing, all those things.

• 10:21Alie Ward?

  And for more on this, you can see Noah's co-authored 2020 paper, "Cultivation Potential Projections of Breadfruit Under Climate Change Scenarios Using An Empirically Validated Suitability Model Calibrated in Hawaii", which warns that if we want to figure out how to grow food that can withstand future climate change, we got to figure it out now to get ahead of it. And in perhaps the only good news about climate change, this study concluded that there is substantial and increasing potential for Future breadfruit production in Hawaii as the climate heats up. The trees like the warmth. And grows best in the tropics or closer to the equator?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  It is definitely a tropical tree. So even in Hawaii, you know, we're technically subtropical. Everyone thinks of us as tropical, but compared to places like Tahiti and Bali, like, we're actually kind of cold.

• 11:10Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  So when you move up the mountain in Hawaii, breadfruit will pretty much only grow below about 1,000 feet. And above that, it starts getting too cold.

• 11:19Alie Ward?

  Oh, you wouldn't even have thought of that because the volcanoes are so tall, like the...

• 11:23Speaker 02

  They are, yeah. You know, Mauna Kea is technically the tallest mountain on Earth if you measure it from the sea floor, 14,000 feet above sea level. So, yeah, you'll sit in the beach, 85 degrees, sunny, drinking a Mai Tai, and there's snow on top of the mountain right up there.

• 11:38Alie Ward?

  Oh, God, that's crazy. And our very first episode of Ologies was volcanology, in case you need a primer on that. But with beaches all the way up to these huge volcanic mountains, essentially Hawaii has a broad range of soil types and elevations and thus ecosystems. And there's a classification called Holdridge Life Zones. And out of the 38 types of zone on the planet, Hawaii has 27 of them. And though breadfruit isn't native to the islands themselves, again, it originated in New Guinea and it was brought to Hawaii by early Polynesian settlers nearly 1,000 years ago. Breadfruit grows well in many parts of the islands. And there's a seedless variety, those are the ones that are commonly eaten.

• 12:21Alie Ward?

  They have to be propagated by grafting, a lot like apples, which we have a whole pomology episode about that. Oh, and remember the Captain Cook expedition that I talked about in the intro? Well, once the European colonizers found out how great breadfruit was, they wanted to take it to the tropics to use it as a staple food for enslaved populations. And one absolutely bonker story, I'll sum it up quick. It involves that botanist that I mentioned in the intro, traveling on a ship for a breadfruit tree gathering mission. And in order to fit this breadfruit tree nursery in the ship, you had to cramp the ship's crew in super close quarters, which they... A bunch of the crew got blackout drunk, I guess, spreading a bunch of pretty sexy diseases between them.

• 13:06Alie Ward?

  The angry captain would flog his underlings. There was a coconut heist from the captain's personal stash. And then what has been called the most notorious mutiny in naval history, the mutiny on the bounty, which resulted in a lot of destroyed breadfruit trees. And then the ousted captain's new ship run aground on the Great Barrier Reef. Some of the mutineers also started a new colony on an island. So, breadfruit. In a moment, we're going to talk about a new type of revolution, this time in the hands of native Hawaiians and ethnobotany enthusiasts like Noah.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  My academic trainings has been in ecology and soil science. But, you know, as a child, I was very strongly engaged in our traditional plants, our crops. I was taught how to make herbal medicines, use our traditional foods. And essentially, that is what people go off to school for, to learn to become an ethnobotanist.

• 14:05Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And so, you know, I had very informal training in ethnobotany and have kind of come full circle in my life, back around and really re-engaged with a lot of these crops that I was exposed to as a kid.

• 14:16Alie Ward?

  Yeah. Now, were your parents also born in Hawaii or did they move there at a certain point? How did your family end up there?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Well, my father's side is ancestrally Hawaiian. So, you know, we can trace our lineage back 16 generations, probably further, but that's where, you know, it kind of fizzles in terms of tracking things down. That whole side of my family is in Hawaii. We're based in Hawaii and, yep, it's home.

• 14:41Alie Ward?

  And when you first started trying to promote more agriculture around breadfruit, it wasn't as easy a sell as you thought it was going to be? Did you think people were going to say, yes, absolutely, it's time that breadfruit got its due in the sun? But what was difficult about convincing communities that this was something worth investing in?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  I would say I absolutely did not expect people to jump on it. I mean, we were passionate about breadfruit because we knew about it. And that's one of the big barriers. People don't know about it.

• 15:13Alie Ward?

  Did you know about it?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Now you know about it. And to get people excited about it, you know, to get them to engage in it, to use it, to bring it back into the food system, we knew was going to be a big educational push. And that's kind of what we've been hanging our coat on, right? If we can just teach people, expose people, all these wonderful things about the food, like, of course, they're going to have it. But, you know, if you just put it in the shelf, people walk into a store, they got no idea what it is, you know? That's scary. I don't want to grab a new food. I don't know how to cook or use or anything.

• 15:44Alie Ward?

  Is it going to sit in the, in the crisper until it's rotting? And then you're like, I spent seven bucks on that. Why'd I do that? Is seven bucks an exaggeration? We did some fact checking. And the actual going rate for whole breadfruit? It depends on where you live. But in some places, it's less than two bucks a pound, with the average breadfruit weighing two and a half pounds, just over a kilo. So what? That's like five, seven bucks. But a 2019 study, "Interactions Between People and Breadfruit in Hawaii: Consumption, Preparation, and Sourcing Patterns," in the Journal of Sustainability, found that most Hawaiians ate breadfruit three times a year or less. And over 70% of those people got it from a friend's tree.

• 16:25Alie Ward?

  Although, having your own breadfruit tree meant eating it about four times more than the people without the trees. So imagine having a tree with three-pound potatoes just grown in your yard. And it's called ulae, you said, in, in Hawaiian?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  In Hawaiian, it's ulu.

• 16:40Alie Ward?

  Ulu.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:41Alie Ward?

  And so when did the idea for a revolution with that in the middle? Revolution. Do you get it? And their logo has a fist uprising, clutching a branch bearing a big old breadfruit. So Noah is very passionate about getting the word out and getting breadfruit back onto dinner tables.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  So we, we got into the broader food system of ulu out of establishing a breadfruit farm. And so we've had a lot of time on the farm with groups of people and friends, you know, doing hard, physical labor and oftentimes raining. But then afterwards, right, you're, you're often sitting around and just kind of kicking ideas. And that's when a lot of, I think, kind of the catchphrases have, have come out, or, you know, like, how do we get? How do we share this excitement, right? We're so stoked on this food and how do we get it out? So there's a lot of things that came out of those early sessions. We called it a "solutionary food," which is the revolutionary solution that like our food systems need.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You know, I do science because I want to see the effect of it in our communities. I want to see it applied and change to make the world a better place. And I think unless you really get it outside of our little circles, it's never going to do that.

• 17:55Alie Ward?

  And Noah had just become a tenured professor, but he was at the Wrigley Storymakers Program to hone skills at communicating his science to a broader public and especially to the communities affected by food scarcity and whose lives will be impacted positively through more sustainable farming. Where can people find out more about what you do or about Breadfruit? Where do you, if people are like, "A bread what?", where do you point them?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Well, if you want to learn about Breadfruit, I would definitely suggest going to eatbreadfruit.com. That is the Huayu Ulu Producers Cooperative. We work collectively with them to get a lot of the information and stories out there. So you can learn about it, you can learn how to cook it, you can buy it, you can engage with it, you can read stories about the farmers, you can see cooking demonstration videos, you know? So yeah, that's again, part of this educational campaign. So yeah, you want to learn about Breadfruit, eatbreadfruit.com.

• 18:48Alie Ward?

  Again, that's eatbreadfruit.com. Favorite recipe?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. So for early engagement, I really like twice-cooked patties. So you know, you steam them, mash it up with some diced onions, lea and paring, salt, pepper, garlic, you know, a little bit of oregano, maybe. Slam those out into patties and then pan fry them.

• 19:09Alie Ward?

  Nice.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  That's a good one.

• 19:10Alie Ward?

  Sounds like a latke.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Yes, a little bit like a latke, but, but less oily.

• 19:15Alie Ward?

  Good to know.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  To me, our favorite product we actually have out is a Breadfruit Chocolate Mousse. So I told you Breadfruit goes through stages. So after that mature potato stage, it actually ripens, it sweetens, it softens. And you take that ripe, sweet, soft Breadfruit and we blend it with local honey, coconut milk, and local cacao. And then we freeze those, so it's a mousse. But it's vegan, 100% local and 95% Breadfruit. But you would never know that when you stick it in your mouth. It's delicious.

• 19:47Alie Ward?

  I later finally made it to the big island in Hawaii and I was able to visit the Uluu Ko'op and take home some breadfruit flour. And yes, I got to try this chocolate breadfruit mousse and it was great. It was like a frozen yogurt custard texture and had this nutty flavor. I loved it. And a complete protein too?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  It is, yeah. Breadfruit has a strong human health component to it. So yeah, complete protein, all seven amino acids, fairly high in vitamins and minerals. There's a lot of emerging research, you know, it's a little bit more close to home, but particularly for our native Hawaiian Pacific islanders are very high at risk for type 2 diabetes, hypertension. And there's a lot of research emerging showing that returning to traditional staples and starches drastically reduce those kind of diet-related diseases. And so with breadfruit, that's related to a relatively low glycemic index, meaning that when you eat it, you're full for a while. You don't burn right through it, want to eat again in an hour or so.

• 20:50Alie Ward?

  And for more on how your body processes food, you can see the wonderful two-part diabetology episodes on blood sugar with Dr. Mike Natter, who is a self-described diabetic diabetologist. And in it, we go over the glycemic index, which essentially rates foods based on their blood sugar and insulin impact. And the higher the number on the glycemic index, the more potential for some adverse blood sugar effects. And plain white bread is up there at 90 out of 100. White rice is 70, boiled potatoes are high at 70, but breadfruit is low to medium at 47 up to 70. And how it's prepared and what it's mixed with also makes a huge difference.

• 21:33Alie Ward?

  Now, a 2015 study in the journal Trends in Food Science and Technology titled Breadfruit: A Traditional Crop With Potential To Prevent Hunger And Mitigate Diabetes In Oceania, explained that around 1950, studies found that Pacific islanders were quote, "remarkably physically fit with no evidence of malnutrition or obesity and no incidence of diabetes." But just 30 Years later, in the 1980s, incidence of diabetes and obesity had skyrocketed. And that now, Pacific Island nations have some of the highest rates of diabetes worldwide. And obesity, I know, is a loaded word, but it's the medical term that researchers and doctors

• 22:14Alie Ward?

  use when describing certain body compositions that may put people at greater risk for metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Now, other recent papers have found that a diabetes prevalence of 40% in adults is common among Pacific countries as diets stray away from traditional crops to these imported and westernized foods. And even back in 2009, there was a paper titled "Against the Tide of Change: Diet and Health in the Pacific Islands." It was in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. And it warned that for many of the small dispersed countries of the Pacific, there is a grave concern about international trading in food, not only because of the adverse effects

• 22:57Alie Ward?

  on health, like diabetes, but also in terms of food security, because there's an increasing level of dependence on these food imports. And that's another issue, because the staple foods that are westernized, that are being imported, tend not to grow well near the equator. So, breadfruit is kind of on the way to swoop in and solve a lot of pressing problems for Pacific Islanders. Wow, it must be so easy to be passionate about this, because it's outside, it's food, it's tasty, it's tied to your heritage and culture. It like, maybe can save massive amounts of people from hunger. I mean, it must be hard to put your laptop away at night and be like, okay, it's time for me to just kick back.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you left out working with the farmers, which is one of the best parts, because every time you go visit a farmer, you know, talk to them, share with them, you leave with like, big baskets of fresh mangoes and flache and, yeah, all sorts of goodies.

• 23:50Alie Ward?

  Thank you so much for doing this.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 23:52Alie Ward?

  This is great.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 23:53Alie Ward?

  So Noah said, if I were ever in Hawaii, come on down to the farm. And as it happened, months later, I was headed there for a few interviews and field trips and to see some family. So we got to tour a breadfruit farm and taste it and get lost in a jungle and even harvest some. Now, all of that will be after the break, but first, let's donate to a cause. And this week, it's going to the Hawaii-based Chef Hui Fund, which connects the culinary world with their community through a strong network of local chefs, produce providers, and educators to deepen the connection to farmers and ranchers and schools and community organizations in an effort to build a more robust food system. So a link to them is up at eatbreadfruit.com, and we'll link it in the show notes. So thank you to sponsors of the show for making that possible.

• 24:40Speaker 03

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• 25:38Alie Ward?

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• 27:33Alie Ward?

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• 27:43Alie Ward?

  Okay, hop in. Let's find this farm, which is one of many research sites that Noah and his team of scientists are monitoring and cultivating to learn where and how to grow and distribute more ulu as a staple crop for the islands.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  And it's absolutely beautiful all of it.

• 28:01Speaker 05

  Ally, I'm guessing you don't have very good service to make a phone call?

• 28:04Alie Ward?

  I don't. I can try and see. I've got one bar. Hey, Dolly? Hey, it's Ally. Yeah, we were lost. Yeah, sorry. We're in kind of a spotty jungle. We've been through over two little bridges. And we're now crossing another one-lane bridge. Okay, so we're headed the right direction?

• 28:26Alie Ward?

  Awesome. Thank you so much. See you in a sec. Bye. We're really close. Is that her truck? Yeah, there we go. Yeah, okay, cool. She moved.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  Hi, Dolly.

• 28:37Alie Ward?

  Oh, look, this looks like an orchard on our left.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  Oh, she opened a gate.

• 28:43Alie Ward?

  Hi, Dolly. So, first off, can you tell me your first and last name?

• 28:48Speaker 06

  Dolly Altofuma.

• 28:49Alie Ward?

  So, we're looking at some very huge trees with giant leaves and a couple of roosters, which is amazing. How many breadfruit trees do you have here?

• 28:56Speaker 06

  We have 30 trees.

• 28:58Alie Ward?

  30 trees!

• 28:59Speaker 06

  And there's four varieties plus the ancestry. So, five in total. If someone comes in here and is like, "I don't even know what a breadfruit is", what do you show them? The fruit first.

• 29:10Alie Ward?

  Okay, cool.

• 29:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, so these ones are ready. They're matured.

• 29:14Alie Ward?

  And so do they get smoother when they're mature like that?

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Yes. When they're smaller, they're a lot spikier. These are different varieties.

• 29:21Alie Ward?

  What?

• 29:22Speaker 06

  This is the Hawaiian variety.

• 29:23Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 29:24Speaker 06

  And this is the ancestry one. This is the bread nut. So, this one is like similar to a jackfruit, a durian. And this one is the breadfruit, which is, it becomes smoother as it matures.

• 29:34Alie Ward?

  These are the size of an oblong cantaloupe, or a large baby's head. And when you say ancestry, does that mean it's an older, like, cultivar?

• 29:44Speaker 06

  Yes, the old, the ancestry first kind.

• 29:47Alie Ward?

  And then, is there an advantage to having different cultivars? Like, are these easier to grow or harvest? Or do they take like less time to mature?

• 29:54Speaker 06

  Well, these ones are more woody in terms of their growth. They are bigger in size compared to other varieties. They're a lot smaller. So, these can feed the whole family. And they're different in flesh, too. The smaller one, which is Armaphala, is yellow flesh. So, you can do chips, stuff like that. But this one, you can put them in coconut milk or, you know, roast it.

• 30:18Alie Ward?

  And then what about the ancestry one?

• 30:19Speaker 06

  So, this one, it has a lot of seeds in it. A lot of people say you can roast the seed and eat it. But because of that, we only, we're growing these for propagation reasons.

• 30:30Alie Ward?

  So that you will take the seeds and then you'll use those to make more trees? How old are these trees?

• 30:35Speaker 06

  These are seven years old, seven, eight years old. They were planted in 2017. So this is one of seven fresh fruit sites we have around the islands.

• 30:45Alie Ward?

  Dolly told me that the research involves seven different growing sites in various ecosystems, from a sea spray environment to mountains on several different islands, including Maui, and this one we're at on the big island. What environment is this? Is this a sea spray? Is this a jungle?

• 31:01Speaker 06

  It has more rain. It gets more rain compared to other sites and good soil.

• 31:05Alie Ward?

  I visited this farm with my wonderful in-laws and your pod mom, Jarrett, who asked about some patches of dried, sappy stuff.

• 31:12Speaker 05

  What's the significance of this kind of like, almost like syrup or something that dried on the outside?

• 31:16Speaker 06

  Also, they call that a latex. It's not only on the fruit, but throughout the whole tree. But that's one indicator of maturity.

• 31:25Alie Ward?

  And by latex, they don't mean the latex you're probably thinking about. Latex just means liquid in Latin, and it is just like a milky liquid from plants. And latex can be composed of a whole botanic soup of proteins and alkaloids and starches and sugars and oils and tannins and resins, which gum up when they're exposed to air, and they act kind of like a free Band-Aid for the tree. And for more on this, you can see the wonderful dendrology two-parter with J. Casey Clapp and breadfruit latex specifically. Should you lap it off a tree? Let's not. Traditionally, it's been used for boat cocking and bird trapping and healing skin infections, nerve pain.

• 32:08Alie Ward?

  And I guess you could ingest it to help with diarrhea if you have that issue. Now, it was April when we were crunching around the leaves, which serve as great mulch for the trees, Dolly told me. But when is it breadfruit season? I was clueless. But Dolly said that harvest season is from June or July all the way to December. And in the past, they have harvested 1,000 pounds of breadfruit in one day from this one small orchard. But this little farm we're recording at is a champion producer with an even longer harvest window.

• 32:40Speaker 06

  It goes on to like January, February, just because I think it gets perfect rain, good soil, just a good site.

• 32:47Alie Ward?

  You know, like, what's the biggest? Bread fruit, you guys have harvested.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  Oh, definitely the ulu Hawaii.

• 32:52Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 06

  It's about four KG. It's big. It's like bigger than my head. Huge, huge fruits we get off from those.

• 33:01Alie Ward?

  That's like eight pounds, like the size of a bowling ball.

• 33:04Speaker 06

  The leaves are more broader and then the fruits are very different. They are more yellow compared to other varieties. So this is from the Ratuunman, Fujian side. Yellow flesh fruit, really good for making ulu chips.

• 33:19Alie Ward?

  And then it kind of like an ostrich skin texture on the outside.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  Uh huh. It also goes smoother in texture. When it goes yellow, it's mature.

• 33:28Alie Ward?

  Then you know it's just like a green light. You're like, okay, sweet, get that. How do you get up there?

• 33:32Speaker 06

  So we maintain our trees by pruning every year. You gotta at least have 12 feet high in order for us to get all the fruit. So it's just me. So I have fruit pickers. I just load them in the truck and that's it.

• 33:48Alie Ward?

  How do you make sure that there's not a bunch of bread fruit on the ground just being wasted?

• 33:51Speaker 06

  So I try to, every time I harvest, I would know, oh, this one would be ready by next week. Or if something happens, I don't turn up next week. I know they're gonna be ready, so I just take them ahead of time.

• 34:04Alie Ward?

  Oh, and they can ripen off the tree?

• 34:05Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Yes, they can.

• 34:06Alie Ward?

  Oh, kind of like a banana or apples? Have you always studied fruit?

• 34:10Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 34:11Alie Ward?

  How did you get into this?

• 34:12Speaker 06

  So I started with Noel Lincoln as a master's student from Samo. I came here in 2018 on a scholarship, but I was mainly focusing on soil fertility. And then he had this grant on bread fruit and I jumped it. And then I'm from Samoa. We eat ulu all the time. So yeah, it's perfect.

• 34:31Alie Ward?

  Do you have a way that you like it prepared?

• 34:33Speaker 06

  Um, so I'm traditional. I like it the old way of putting in coconut milk. When it's like perfect maturity, a little bit soft, but still firm. And then you peel that and put in water, boil, take out the water and put coconut milk. Yeah, that's my favorite way.

• 34:48Alie Ward?

  Okay, let's say that you plant one, but you're hungry and impatient.

• 34:53Speaker 05

  And it takes how long for a tree to produce fruit in the first place?

• 34:56Speaker 06

  Uh, for like three to five years.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 34:58Speaker 06

  You'll get fruits. And then I've read in literature that it can go up to 50 years. It will still produce.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  That's just so much year round.

• 35:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  Are there ways to preserve it for the off months?

• 35:10Speaker 06

  So, there is one island that used to do a lot of the fermenting. They dig a hole and put all the ulu inside. And we have new organizations now like Ulu Co-op that takes all the fruit and then make use of all that harvest. They froze it, they dry it, they pro-cook it. Yeah, they do all sorts of kinds of stuff. Yeah, flower.

• 35:30Alie Ward?

  Do you have any tips for anyone who either has a breadfruit tree or is thinking about planting one? Like, any tips on how to make your trees happy?

• 35:40Speaker 06

  Well, as long as they're in a nice, cool environment and with space. Because ulu are big trees and they require space to grow in. Keep watering them every day and good soil.

• 35:51Alie Ward?

  They'll be happy.

• 35:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, they'll be happy.

• 35:53Alie Ward?

  And of course, location, location, location. Breadfruit is grown successfully in 90 countries throughout South and Southeast Asia and Madagascar, the Caribbean, and of course, the Pacific Islands. Now, if you're in a tropical region, pretty much good to go. But apparently, like many Americans, breadfruit hasn't been able to thrive in Florida. Mexico and Brazil, though, have breadfruit. And be patient with them for a couple of years.

• 36:18Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:18Alie Ward?

  Right?

• 36:19Speaker 06

  Yes. Then three to five years, you'll have fruits.

• 36:22Alie Ward?

  So, Dolly says that these ones can grow up to 50 feet tall, but some breadfruit trees can be 85 feet tall, like an eight-story building, almost 30 meters. But they prune theirs back to help with airflow and to reduce the chance of disease that can flourish when these dense leaf canopies stay too moist. They also prune them to keep them about 12 feet high just for practical ladder-climbing reasons. I mean, you try getting breadfruit out of something the size of a building. Ever been bonked on the noggin by a breadfruit?

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 36:57Alie Ward?

  Knock on breadfruit trees, right?

• 36:59Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:59Alie Ward?

  I imagine you'd have to look up if you're picking them, make sure. Nothing's coming down.

• 37:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 06

  You have to just make sure you're holding it so it doesn't drop and make sure no one's it might fall in there.

• 37:11Alie Ward?

  Do they shatter when they drop? Like if they're ripe?

• 37:14Speaker 06

  If they're ripe, they do. They like. Yeah.

• 37:17Alie Ward?

  And then you're picking up breadfruit off the ground?

• 37:19Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 37:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  But we take them before that stage.

• 37:22Alie Ward?

  So they're not just goopy goops?

• 37:24Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 37:25Alie Ward?

  So some cultivars are round and spikier. Others are egg shaped, like a big green spaghetti squash with smooth reptile scales. I wanted to cradle one like an infant and tell it was doing a great job.

• 37:38Speaker 06

  So I did bring some fruit pickers in case you guys wanna pick some ulu and take with you.

• 37:44Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow. I didn't know we get a souvenir. That's so cool. I had no idea. So this is the part where you don't stand under it?

• 37:54Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 37:54Alie Ward?

  Right? Unless you want a concussion.

• 37:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:56Alie Ward?

  Look at that. Yeah, it just plunks it right down.

• 37:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:00Alie Ward?

  Like a little baby in the grass. Hello.

• 38:04Speaker 06

  Cool.

• 38:06Alie Ward?

  That's so heavy.

• 38:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, you need muscles for this kind of work.

• 38:11Alie Ward?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 38:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, who needs to go to the gym, right?

• 38:13Alie Ward?

  I know. And Dolly bounces between sites doing fieldwork as she's a third year PhD student. And just the day before, she was on Kauai to collect soil and leaf samples at another breadfruit farm. You know, just island hopping, talking to plants.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  There's so much opportunity with breadfruit. And it's fun and it's who would not want to come out to the open air and be away from the lab and be outside and do this kind of work. So, yeah, it has been great.

• 38:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah, the fieldwork situation here isn't.

• 38:45Speaker 06

  The gym work, you mean?

• 38:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah, the gym work and the fieldwork. This is great. Thank you so much for letting us come and check this out.

• 38:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you for having me.

• 38:52Alie Ward?

  We got to pick some, see them picked. I'm excited to eat them. So ask scholarly people culinary questions and the answer might be indigenous botany. Thank you so, so much to Dr. Noah Kekueva, Lincoln and Dolly Altifuna for hanging out on a dock and in an orchard, respectively. And to find out more about their work and their mission, you can check out eatbredfruit.org. And we'll also link to the Chef Huifan donation page for them. And we are at Instagram and on Blue Sky at Ologies and I'm at Ali Ward on both. Smallologies are our shorter, kid-friendly versions of classic episodes and they are in their own feed. You can find Smallologies wherever you get podcasts, kid

• 39:33Alie Ward?

  safe. Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch.com. All of this is linked in the show notes and also at aliward.com/ologies/bredfruit. Erin Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Calliar Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale managing directs the whole shebang. Jake Chaffee is one of our talented editors and producer. Researcher and additional writing for this episode was done by the lovely Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Thank you so much, MM, for taking the lead on this so beautifully. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. And thank you also to Sam Mason, Christine, Kyle, and your podmother, Cher Sleeper, for going on this breadfruit adventure in Hawaii and the USC Storymakers Program

• 40:16Alie Ward?

  for having me so that I could meet your scientists and I could pepper them with questions. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And we got to the farm. Two Australian sheepdogs barreled out of the gate like monsters and I stooped down to greet them and they mowed me over into the grass. This is within seconds of meeting Dolly. And they pinned me down with face licks. Oh my God. Oh my God. Hi babies. Hi babies. They're friendly. I loved every second. This farm trip was already a success by that point. Okay. Thanks

• 40:58Alie Ward?

  for coming along on the field trip. I hope you had fun. Okay. Bye-bye.