So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take a left and then you go.
Past the Murphy's house.
You know the Murphy's their young lad Sean. I think it's over in London now, oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to seventy five percent off new van policies.
FBD Insurance Support. It's what we do.
Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase you and once he gives up, you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on five years no claims discount, Terms and conditions apply. Underwritten by FBD Insurance Plc FBD Insurance Group Limited training as FBD Insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Get value you can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert for only sixteen EU row like Succulent Board be approved. Virus Angus striployin stakes with pepper Corn butter or Delicious Virus chicken parmesana, served with creamy potato gratam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoyed goosillionaire or sold a caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop
in store or online tasco. Every little helps, I've been able to most doors prices very inn express.
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 in 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 psychom 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 Island to start asking him one 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 two thousand miles in either direction from Polynesia or North America. So about a thousand 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 maite islands are great.
Let's live here.
Let's bring our pigs, chickens, dogs, and foods like coconut and sugar cane and bananas and taro root and breadfruit. So many centuries later European explorers will 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 have 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 chiefest 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 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 Sustainabilities 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 are of Indigenous Crops and Cropping Systems at the University of Hawaii at Manoah. 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 months later, already headed to Hawaii for some interviews and a visit 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 take you.
So all aboard.
Let's go breadfruit growing with ethnobotanist, indigenous ecobiologist, doctor Noah Kekueva Lincoln and research assistant and soil scientists who's working on her PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Dali Altafuna for this field trip a Hawaiian breadfruit Revolusian. So to set the scene, I've been on Catalian Island outside of la for several days with about a half a dozen climate scientists and science communicators like Liz Neelee
and Ed Yan. 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 become in pals. So it's near the end of the trip and now Noah and I are walking down a hill from the usc Ridley 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 when we walk, Yeah, we'll talk. We'll walk and talk.
Noah Lincoln He him.
And what's the genus and species of the breadfruit that you study the.
Most, Well, they're all the same species. They are Artocarpus altilis.
Okay, are you an artocarparologist?
Have you looked up to see if that's an ology you knew I was going to be here?
Did you look up earlier?
I did not. I tend the lump at all under our broader work of ethnobotany or ethno biology. I guess we want to ology.
I was going to say, how dare you with the you might have looked? Come back with an X. I can't do.
Anything with that oranism 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 aartocarpus, which means in Greek breadfruit literally, so most of the cultivated breadfruits descend from the species known as bread nut
which is native to the Papa ne 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 there are varieties can be.
As tiny as an apple.
Some of them also like blackberries, breadfruit are a compound fruit. So each big old breadfruit is actually up to two thousand flowers fused into one megafruit, which is why it looks spiky or scaled lizard or I suppose dragon skin. Okay, breadfruit, What was the first time you ever ate it? Because you're born on Hawaii, Yes, so.
I mean we had it as kids, you know, but pretty sparsely, and probably been working on breadfruit for about ten 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 and so, you know, especially with our staple foods. There are comfort foods, right. We grew up on rice and transitioning to you know, particularly
our indigenous starches, of which breadfruits won. It was a very challenging and deliberate switch that took a lot of years.
And staple foods are the ones that we tend to eat every day, and different cultures tend to lean toward their own staple foods. I 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 eighty five percent 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 fresh off a tree? Can you eat it right off a tree? Or must it be cooked?
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 it, you know, and its youngest stage me about the size of a baseball. It's it's a lot like a vegetable Okay, you can pickle it. People make things that taste like artichoke carts basically, oh yeah, and then you know, it matures and that's it's you know, basically at that point, 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 know, are you sure about that?
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.
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 out for.
The tree to mature in order to bear fruit or does it make fruit.
Even when it's young?
And 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 eighteen 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.
And for more on this you can see no As co authored twenty twenty 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've 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 bread fruit production in Hawaii. As the climate heats up. The trees like the warmth.
And grows best in the tropics or closer to the equator.
It is definitely a tropical tree, so even in Hawaii, you know, we're technically subtropics. Everyone thinks of us as tropical, but compared to places like Tahiti and Bali, Like, we're actually kind of cold.
Oh wow.
So when you move up the mountain in Hawaii, redfruit will pretty much only grow below about one thousand feet and above that it starts getting too cold.
Oh, you wouldn't.
Even have thought of that, because the volcanoes are so tall, like they are.
Yeah, you know, Monica's technically the tallest mountain on Earth if you measure it from the seafloor, fourteen thousand feet above sea level. So yeah, you'll sit in the beach eighty five degrees signing, drinking a mytie and there's snow on top of the mountain right up there.
That's crazy.
And our very first episode of ologies with 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 old Ridge life zones, and out of the thirty eight types of zone on the planet, Hawaii has twenty seven of them.
And though redfruit isn't native to the islands themselves, again, it originated in and it was brought to Hawaii by early Polynesian settlers nearly a thousand 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. 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, he had to cramp the ship's
crew and super close quarters, which they hated. A bunch of the crew got blackout drunk, I guess, spreading a bunch of pretty sexy diseases between them. 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.
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. It's 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 hethnobotanists. Yeah, and so you know, I had very informal training in ethnobotany and to 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. Yeah.
Now, were your parents also born in Hawaii or did they move there at a certain point.
How did your feeling end up there?
Well, my father's side is ancestrally Hawaiian, so you know, we can trace our lineage back sixteen 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. Were based in Hawaii, and yeah, it's home.
And when you first started trying to promote more agriculture around breadfruit, it wasn't as easy as sell as you thought it was going to be. Did you think people were going to say? Yes, absolutely time that breadfruit got its due in theissan? But what was difficult about convincing communities that this was something worth investing in.
I would say I absolutely did not expect people to jump on it. I mean, we were passionate about bread fruit because we knew about it, and that's one of the big barriers. People don't know about it.
Did you know about it?
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 a 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.
Is it going to sit in the crisper until it's rotting?
Yeah?
I met seven bucks on that.
Why did I do that?
Seven bucks an exaggeration. We did some fact checking and the actual going rate for a 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 twenty nineteen study Interactions between people and Breadfruit in Hawaii Consumption, Preparation and Sourcing Patterns in the journal Sustainability found that most Hawaiians ate breadfruit three times a year or less, and over seventy percent of those people got it from a friend's tree, 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 Ulai, you said in Hawaiian and Hawaiian is Ulu Ulu. Yeah, 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.
So 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 peace bull and friends, you know, doing hard physical labor and oftentimes raining, and but then afterwards you 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 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. 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.
I know it.
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?
Well, if you want to learn about breadfruit, I would definitely suggest going to eat breadfruit dot com. That is the what you 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 well, so yeah,
that's again part of this educational campaign. So yeah, you want to learn about breadfruit, eat breadfruit dot.
Com Again, that's eat breadfruit dot com favorite recipe.
Oh boy, So for early engagement, I really like twice cook patties. Oh so you know you steam them, mash it up with some diced onions, lee and parrens, salt, pepper, garlic, you know a little bit of oregano, maybe slam those out into patties and then pan fry them. That's a good one. Sounds like a latka, yes, a little bit like a lotca, but less oily.
Good to know to me.
Our favorite product we actually have out is a breadfruit chocolate mouse. 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 bread fruit and we blend it with local honey, coconut milk, and local cacal oh, and then we freeze those. So it's a moose, but it's vegan, one hundred percent local
and ninety five percent breadfruit. But you would never know that when you stick it in your mouth, it's it's delicious.
And later finally made it to the Big Island in Hawaii and I was able to visit the Ulu co op and take home some breadfruit flour and yes, I got to try this chocolate breadfruit mouse 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, it is.
Yeah, breadfruit has a strong human health opponent 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 two 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.
And for more on how your body processes food. You can see the wonderful two part Diabetology episodes on blood sugar with doctor 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 ninety out of
one hundred, white rice is seventy. Boiled potatoes are high at seventy, but breadfruit is low to medium at forty seven up to seventy, and how it's prepared and what it's mixed with also makes a huge difference.
Now.
A twenty fifteen 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 nineteen fifty, studies found that Pacific Islanders were quote remarkably physically fit, with no evidence of malnutrition or obesity and no incidence of diabetes, But just thirty years later in the nineteen eighties, incidents 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 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 forty percent in adults is common among Pacific countries as diets stray away from traditional crops to these imported and
westernized foods. And even back in two thousand and nine, there was a paper title 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 and food, not only because of the adverse effects on health 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 in 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.
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 them. You leave with like big baskets and fresh mangos and light chy and yeah, all sorts of goodies.
Thank you so much for doing this. That'bsolutely amazing.
So Noah said, if I were every 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 and 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 Hooey 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 dot com and we'll link in
the show notes. So thank you to sponsors of the show for making that possible.
So you want to go up this road here and get it around a bit and you take a left and then you go past the Murphy's house, you know, to Murphy's there, you old lad Sean. I thank you over in London now, oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to seventy five percent off new van policies FBD insurance support.
It's what we do.
Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase yet and once he gives up, you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on five years. There's no claims discount terms and conditions apply underwritten by FBD Insurance PSC. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Get value.
You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert for only sixteen euro like Succulent Board be approved, Rush Angle Striploin steaks with peppercorn butter or Delicious Virus Chicken Parmesama served with creamy potato gretam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in store or online.
Tesco. Every Little Helps available at most stores. Prices very in express, 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.
And it's absolutely beautiful, all of it.
Kelly, I'm guessing you know how very good service to venaform.
I don't.
I can try and see.
I've got one bar.
Hey Dolly, Hey doally? 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 head of the re direction. 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 waved. Hi Dolly. Oh look this looks like an orchard on our left.
Oh?
Is she opening egg gate?
Hi? Dolly?
So, first off, can can you tell me your first and last name?
Dolly?
So we're looking at some very huge trees with giant leaves and a couple of roosters, which is amazing.
How many bread fit trees do you have here?
We have thirty trees. Thirty trees, and there's four varieties plus the ancestry, so five 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? So they're matured, and.
So do they get smoother when they're mature like that?
Yes, when they're smaller there's a lot spike here. These are different varieties. This is the Hawaiian variety, okay, 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 bread fruit, which is it becomes smoother as it matures.
These are the size of an oblong canalo or a large baby's head. And when you say ancestry, does that mean it's an older like.
Old ancestry first kind?
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?
While 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 there are different in flesh to the smaller one, which is our mafalla is a 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.
And then what about the ancestry one.
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 were growing these for propagation reasons.
Oh, so you will take the seeds and then you'll use those to make more trees.
How old are these trees?
These are seven years old, seven eight years old. They were planted in twenty seventeen. So this is one of seven bread food sites we have around the islands.
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.
The white environment is this? Is this a sea spray? Is this a jungle?
It has more rain, It gets more rain compared to other sites good soil.
I visited this farm with my wonderful in laws and your pod mom, Jarrett, who asked about some patches of dried sappy stuff.
What's the significance of this kind of like almost like syrup or something that dried on the app.
So they call that a latex. It's not only on the fruit but throughout the whole tree. Uh, But that's one indicator of maturity.
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 JKC. Clap and breadfruit latex specifically, should you lap it off a tree, Let's not. Traditionally it's been used for boat cocking and bird tree wrapping and healing skin infections, nerve pain, 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 tree, as 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 one thousand pounds of bread fruit 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.
It goes on to like January Febry, just because I think it gets perfect rain, good soil, just a good sight.
You know, Like, what's the biggest bread for you guys have.
Definitely the u Hawaii. Yeah, it's about four kg. It's big. It's like bigger than my head. Huge, huge fruits. So we get off from those.
That's like eight pounds, like the size of a bowling.
The leaves them all broader, and then the fruits are very different. They are more yellow coar to other varieties. So this is from the Ratumen Fiji. Inside yellow flesh fruit really good for making ulu chips.
And then it kind of like an ostrich skin texture on the outside.
Uh huh. It also goes smooth in texture. When it goes yellow, it's mature.
Then you know, it's just like a green light. You're like, okay, so wait that, how do you get up there?
So we maintain our trees by puny every year. You gotta at least have twelve feet high in order for us to get all the fruits. So it's just me. So I have fruit pickers, just blow them in the truck and that's it.
How do you make sure that there's not a bunch of bread fruit on the ground just being wasted.
So I try to every time I harvest, I would know all these one would be ready by next week, or if something happens, I don't turn up next week, I know they're going to be ready, So I just take them ahead of time.
And they can ripen off the tree. Yes, they can, kind of like a banana or apples. Have you always studied fruit? Nope?
This was so I started with No Lincoln as a master student from Samore. I came here in twenty eighteen on a scholarship, but I was mainly focusing on sore fertility. And then he had this grant on bread food and I jumped it. And then I'm from Sawmore. We ulu all the time. So yeah, it's perfect.
Do you have a way that you like it prepared?
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 putting water, boil, take out the water and put coconut milk. Yeah, that's my favorite way.
Okay, let's say that you plant one, but you're hungry and impatient, and.
It takes how long for a tree to produced fruit in the first place?
Firm like three to five years you'll get fruits. And then I read in literature that it can go up to fifty years it will produce. That's just so much year round.
Yeah, are there ways to preserve it for the off months?
So there is one island that used to do a lot of the fermenting. They did go hole and put all the ullhu inside. And we have new organizations now like Ullu CoAP that takes all the fruit in and make it use of all that harvest. They froze it, they dry it, they pro cook it. Yeah, they do all yeah, flour.
Do you have any tips for anyone who either has a bread fruit tree or is thinking about planting one, Like any tips on how to make your trees happy?
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. They'll be happy. They'll be happy.
And of course, location, location, location, Breadfruit is grown successfully in ninety 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.
Not have breadfruit and be patient with them for a couple of years, right.
Yes, but then three to five years you'll have fruits.
So Dolly says that these ones can grow up to fifty feet tall, but some breadfruit trees can be eighty five feet tall, like an eight story building, almost thirty 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 twelve feet high, just for practical ladder climbing reasons. I mean, you try getting breadfruit out of something the size of a building.
Ever been banked on the noggin by a breadfruit?
Nope?
Not on breadfruit trees, right.
I imagine you'd have to look up if you're picking them, make sure nothing's coming down.
Yeah, you had to just make sure you're holding it and drop and make sure no one's it might fall in there?
Do they shatter when they drop? Like if they're ripe?
They like?
Yeah, and then you're picking up red foot off the ground.
Yes, but we take them before that stage.
So they're not just goofy goops.
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 it was doing a great job.
So I did bring some fruit pickers in case you guys want to pick some ulu and take with you.
Oh wow, I didn't know. I get a souvenir. That's so cool.
I had no idea. So this is a part where you don't stand under it, yes, right, unless you want a concussion.
Look at that. Yeah, it just plunks it right down. Yeah, like a little baby in the grass. Hello.
Cool, that's so heavy.
Yeah, you need muscles for this work, Oh my gosh. Yeah, who needs to go to the gym?
And Dolly bounces between sites doing field work as she's a third year PhD student, and just the day before she was on Kowhai to collect soil and leaf samples at another bread fruit farm. You know, just island hopping talking to plants.
There's so much opportunity with bread food 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. Yeah, the field work situation, the gym work in.
The field work, this is great. Thank you so much for learning us come and check this out.
Thank you for having him.
I got to pick some, get picked. I'm excited to eat them.
So ask scholarly people culinary questions and the answer might be indigenous botany. Thank you so much to doctor Noah Keekoweva Lincoln and Dolly Altafuna for hanging out on a doc and in an orchard, respectively. And to find out more about their work and their mission, you can check out Eat Breadfruit dot org and we'll also link to the Chef Hooey fund donation page for them. And we are at Instagram and on Blue Sky at Ologies and
I'm at Ali ward on. Both smologies are our shorter, kid friendly versions of classic episodes and they are in their own feed. You can find Smologies wherever you get podcasts, Kids safe Ologies, merch is at ologiesmerch dot com. All of this is linked in the show notes and also at aliwar dot com, slash Ologies, slash Breadfruit. Aaron Talbert Adminsiologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyerd is the website. Noel Dilworth is our
scheduling producer. Susan Hale Managing directs the whole Shabang. Jake Chafe as 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 the so beautifully. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music, and thank you also to Sam Mason, Christine Kyle and your pod mother Shared Sleeper for going on this Breadfruit adventure in Hawaii and the USC story Makers Program 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 sheep dogs 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. Hi babies, they're friendly. I loved every second. This farm trip was already a success by that point. Okay, thanks for coming along.
I'm a field trip. I hope you had fun.
Okay for my pacademology, zoology, lithology, Yeah, zoology, meteorology, ethnology, serialogylogy's give by.
These breadfruit plants are fantastic.
So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout and you take a left and then you go past the Murphy's house. You know the Murphy's their young lad Sean. I think he's over in London now, Oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to seventy five percent off new van policies.
FBD insurance support. It's what we do.
Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier was starting to chase yet and once he gives up, you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on five years no claims. Discount terms and conditions apply. Underwritten by FBD Insurance Plc. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Island.
Get value.
You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert for only sixteen euro like Succulent Board be approved. Irushanged a strip loin steaks with pepper corn butter or delicious Irish chicken Parmeshama served with creamy potato cretam and her mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in store or online.
Tesco. Every little helps available the most stores, prices varying. Express