You can’t talk about the National Tropical Botanical Garden without mentioning the Breadfruit Institute.
Some regard Diane Ragone as the mother of the breadfruit movement. Her connection to the gardens on Maui and Kauaʻi, where the institute was born and nurtured, made it an easy decision to visit the Garden Isle.
HPR met two staffers who tend to the ʻulu forest daily, battling the wind, rain, and an assortment of pests.
NTBG agroforestry technician Neal Uno manages the Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforest at the McBryde Garden on Kauaʻi.
"ROBA was specifically designed to create an agroforest where you could harvest year-round, and also the varieties were selected for their high nutritional value. This actually isn't the full collection of breadfruit that NTBG has. The full collection is on Maui in Kahanu, and we have something like 150 different varieties," Uno said.
He shared that they have 27 trees in total, and some are wild relatives of breadfruit from Papua, New Guinea, the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The ʻulu trees require a light touch in terms of horticultural expertise and maintenance, Uno said.
"They tend to do well with just whatever rain we get. I think one of the main pillars here is food security, and this is a reliable starch that grows on a tree and it grows really well in Hawaiʻi, and there's lots of different varieties you can choose from to plant in your own backyard and have food for yourself and your whole community," he said.
He can tell the difference between the various breadfruits' textures and tastes.
"The ones from Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaiʻi, they're all like a denser fruit — bit heavy. So it's more like potato. These are kind of light and effervescent. They'll melt in your stew," he said.
One of his colleagues, tropical crop diversity scientist Julia Ávila, hails from Brazil, where a gastronomy institute works to ensure that their national cuisine, which includes ʻulu, isn't lost. Ávila told HPR that breadfruit has ties to Brazil’s slave trade.
"It's (ʻulu) not as appreciated as for people in (the) Pacific ... but definitely on the northwest of Brazil and in the north of Brazil, you can find it in some farmers markets and some agroforest like here," she said.
Ávila said that it's amazing how many people look for local varieties of ʻulu.
"Many farmers nowadays look to understand and to have ʻulu, but also complementing it with other varieties from Pacific, that it's so good to have this diversity, that it's not only biological diversity but also nutritional diversity to the community, to the farmers," she said.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Jan. 14, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
