Author Topic: The Best Breadfruits  (Read 4217 times)

Dada

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The Best Breadfruits
« on: April 08, 2017, 10:57:07 AM »
Hi all,
I would like to get some Input from all of u as to what u consider to be the best Breadfruit cultivars.
I am interested in Breadfruit flour as it is highly nutritious and has no gluten.
I came across the Breadfruit Institute (http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/)
Their collection contains 226 accessions and approximately 120 varieties from 34 islands in the Pacific (Cook Islands, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Kiribati, the Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rotuma, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga and Vanuatu), as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, the Seychelles and Honduras. Out of which they have 20 selected some dwarf varieties

These 20 varieties are a small sample of the amazing diversity found in the world's largest collection of breadfruit at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii. Some are varieties considered desirable or superior, a few are unique to their islands of origin, and others are widely cultivated in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. These and other varieties together can provide a year-round supply of nutritious fruit.
http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/database/search/selected/

 Unfortunately it it is almost impossible to import some plants to Ecuador or requires a lot of finance and paperwork. Does anyone have some of those cultivars willing to share seeds?
Thanks

JF

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #1 on: April 08, 2017, 11:08:24 AM »
The ones you fry.....it's not the most appetizing fruit

Bush2Beach

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #2 on: April 08, 2017, 12:01:50 PM »
Dada, try contacting the Breadfruit Institute and see if they'll send seeds or put you in touch with someone.
They were giving away Breadfruit tree's for awhile to promote the fruit.
I've seen Cassava flour here but not Breadfruit flour.
Breadfruit is one of my favorite fruits and very diverse like most fruits there is a ton of ways to prepare them to eat, not just fried as suggested. Though we do not have access to good Breadfruit in the states generally , there's quite a list of recipe's on the website which comes in handy when there is a plethora of breadfruit around. One favorite way to eat Breadfruit is to have a sweet variety and put it in the freezer the day it gets very soft and you have a  sweet breadfruit dessert.
Recipe list http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/resources/cms.php/display/cat/7/


Raulglezruiz

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2017, 02:55:38 PM »
Dada most of those breadfruits( A. Altilis) , doesn't have seeds is only flesh, that is why is so hard to propagate them, the one I have here in Mexico, was bought as a little root sucker from Lancetilla Honduras, then there's the breadnut (A. Camansi) that one has mostly edible seeds and no flesh, if you mean this one I can get you some seeds...
El verde es vida!

pineislander

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2017, 04:27:10 PM »
Dada,
There are probably a diversity of breadfruits available in Ecuador. I'd advise you to search near the coastal towns where people of Afro-Caribbean descent are more common. I'd bet you will find that some of them have breadfruit trees. Learn how to spot them and propagate, usually a piece of root is what you need.
Offer to buy some pieces of root, bring a tool to dig and cut, and if you can't plant immediately, a small cooler to preserve the root.
How to propagate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2WHyHtMDEo

fruitlovers

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2017, 05:25:13 PM »
Dada, try contacting the Breadfruit Institute and see if they'll send seeds or put you in touch with someone.
They were giving away Breadfruit tree's for awhile to promote the fruit.
I've seen Cassava flour here but not Breadfruit flour.
Breadfruit is one of my favorite fruits and very diverse like most fruits there is a ton of ways to prepare them to eat, not just fried as suggested. Though we do not have access to good Breadfruit in the states generally , there's quite a list of recipe's on the website which comes in handy when there is a plethora of breadfruit around. One favorite way to eat Breadfruit is to have a sweet variety and put it in the freezer the day it gets very soft and you have a  sweet breadfruit dessert.
Recipe list http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/resources/cms.php/display/cat/7/
The good breadfruits don't have seeds. The breadfruit institute propagates them by TC. It's very hard to get anything from them. They don't give anything away fro free, although they had a program to share TC plants to third world countries for free. Thev've only propagated by TC a couple of cultivars for distribution out of their huge collection.
Oscar

Bush2Beach

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2017, 01:22:52 PM »
Dada, try contacting the Breadfruit Institute and see if they'll send seeds or put you in touch with someone.
They were giving away Breadfruit tree's for awhile to promote the fruit.
I've seen Cassava flour here but not Breadfruit flour.
Breadfruit is one of my favorite fruits and very diverse like most fruits there is a ton of ways to prepare them to eat, not just fried as suggested. Though we do not have access to good Breadfruit in the states generally , there's quite a list of recipe's on the website which comes in handy when there is a plethora of breadfruit around. One favorite way to eat Breadfruit is to have a sweet variety and put it in the freezer the day it gets very soft and you have a  sweet breadfruit dessert.
Recipe list http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/resources/cms.php/display/cat/7/
The good breadfruits don't have seeds. The breadfruit institute propagates them by TC. It's very hard to get anything from them. They don't give anything away fro free, although they had a program to share TC plants to third world countries for free. Thev've only propagated by TC a couple of cultivars for distribution out of their huge collection.

While I may have overlooked the slightly important fact that good Breadfruit does not have seeds, I had in fact remembered correctly that the Breadfruit Institute was giving away free Breadfruit tree's of different varieties to promote And encourage people to grow Breadfruit in Hawaii in 2015.
It could be a dead end to contact them but they are into promoting Breadfruit varieties, sometimes propagating and giving the tree's away for free, so it's also worth a shot the same way.

Chupa King

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2017, 04:06:05 PM »
Keep searching. The Ulu will find you. I stumbled upon a variety the Institute has not been able to ID. Breadfruit will occasionally produce seeds. My buddy has a tree that's been passed down from generations that will pop a seed every other year. He has several keiki that are growing strong. We need to wait till maturity to see if we get something new.
Biodiversity is key.

Kona fruit farm

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2018, 03:38:04 PM »
To my Hawaiian friends what are the cultivars most suggested for Hawaii.  I’m on big island.  Seems like I see 2-4 varieties for sale.  Trying to narrow it down to 1
With 3 acres of prime real estate for growing tropicals... why not create my own garden of eden?? Work in progress

DurianLover

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #9 on: May 05, 2018, 04:01:55 PM »
Dada, try contacting the Breadfruit Institute and see if they'll send seeds or put you in touch with someone.
They were giving away Breadfruit tree's for awhile to promote the fruit.
I've seen Cassava flour here but not Breadfruit flour.
Breadfruit is one of my favorite fruits and very diverse like most fruits there is a ton of ways to prepare them to eat, not just fried as suggested. Though we do not have access to good Breadfruit in the states generally , there's quite a list of recipe's on the website which comes in handy when there is a plethora of breadfruit around. One favorite way to eat Breadfruit is to have a sweet variety and put it in the freezer the day it gets very soft and you have a  sweet breadfruit dessert.
Recipe list http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/resources/cms.php/display/cat/7/
The good breadfruits don't have seeds. The breadfruit institute propagates them by TC. It's very hard to get anything from them. They don't give anything away fro free, although they had a program to share TC plants to third world countries for free. Thev've only propagated by TC a couple of cultivars for distribution out of their huge collection.

While I may have overlooked the slightly important fact that good Breadfruit does not have seeds, I had in fact remembered correctly that the Breadfruit Institute was giving away free Breadfruit tree's of different varieties to promote And encourage people to grow Breadfruit in Hawaii in 2015.
It could be a dead end to contact them but they are into promoting Breadfruit varieties, sometimes propagating and giving the tree's away for free, so it's also worth a shot the same way.

Some corrections and observation while trying to get in touch with them over course of a several years.
I came to conclusion that Breadfruit Institute is absolutely for profit while hiding under non-profit banner. They do not share anything and completely ignore all requests for genetic material. 2015 give away was done by another Hawaiian non profit "in partnership with Breadfruit Institute" as they claim. They probably had to buy trees from Breadfruit Institute in order to distribute them for free.
I think they run on donations, grants, and sharing of genetic material to so called non profit spin off Global Breadfruit which is also completely for for profit. Since in US non profit can keep 90% of inflows for administrative purposes, they got themselves comfy operation going.
Global Breadfruit overseen by two German businessmen with multiple successful ventures in agriculture. Global Breadfruit needs minimum order of 288 trees or $2880 to get them talking. Include air cargo, documentation fees, probably nothing will get done without $3500. Breadfruit Institute or sister company do not provide free trees to the third world countries. Somebody has to pay up substantial amount first (that is soliciting third party donation). They claim have distributed 100 000 trees so far, which is $1 million inflow just for trees. Nice operation under "alleviating hunger in tropics" banner.


luketrollope

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #10 on: May 05, 2018, 05:11:07 PM »
Those are interesting observations durian lover. I was coming to the same conclusions actually. And Chuppa king let us know how true to type the seedling bread fruit is. From what I can gather a breadfruit seedling will be true to type if it was not cross pollinated by another variety as in it is isolated but I don't know if any one has tested this. It would be worthwhile to do so as that would be the easiest way to distribute the plant too get a good variety of  nearly seedless bread fruit that throws an odd seed.

It is hard to get the numbers needed via root cuttings and root suckers here in Australia. I have tried stem cuttings and out of about 500 cuttings I got about 5 plants so 1 in a hundred there! Big root suckers are best I have found as in the sucker is around 1 meter high then cut it right back and they re shoot.

But really tissue culture is the only way too go with bread fruit and the German mob who are in with the breadfruit institute seem to have a bit of a monopoly on that. I tried to get maafala tissue cultured in Australia but after taking 3 batches of propagating material to the lab 4 hours drive away   I gave up after they had no success with it. I wrote to global breadfruit asking for some advice but they never wrote back. I think they are in the "charity business"

I don't mind spending the money on the tissue culture plants from global bread fruit the problem for me is the import requirements for live plants to Australia are very tight and that is where the problem is here. Plants spend 6 months in quarantine and they charge per plant per day. Seeds on the other hand are easy enough if the plant is permitted.

Anyway it is such a good tree it is worth the effort to keep trying.
 

pineislander

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #11 on: May 05, 2018, 06:07:37 PM »
As close as Australia is to Pacific islands and at least some polynesian residents I'd be surprised if there wasn't substantial material there. Maybe get to know some Samoans....

murahilin

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #12 on: May 05, 2018, 09:39:10 PM »
Dada,
There are probably a diversity of breadfruits available in Ecuador. I'd advise you to search near the coastal towns where people of Afro-Caribbean descent are more common. I'd bet you will find that some of them have breadfruit trees. Learn how to spot them and propagate, usually a piece of root is what you need.
Offer to buy some pieces of root, bring a tool to dig and cut, and if you can't plant immediately, a small cooler to preserve the root.
How to propagate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2WHyHtMDEo

Afro-Caribbean in Ecuador?

luketrollope

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #13 on: May 05, 2018, 10:23:44 PM »
As close as Australia is to Pacific islands and at least some polynesian residents I'd be surprised if there wasn't substantial material there. Maybe get to know some Samoans....

Yeah there are plenty of Polynesians here and several breadfruit cultivars of which I have 4 in the ground here. There are not that many trees though. They are not rare here but not common either.

I have a plant nursery and have orders for them in the 100's. The problem is getting them in the numbers needed. How many suckers does a tree produce? not many and how long would it take to get 1000 trees from root cuttings? A long time! As well as a shortage of material.   That is why tissue culture is the way to go.

murahilin

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #14 on: May 05, 2018, 10:56:17 PM »
As close as Australia is to Pacific islands and at least some polynesian residents I'd be surprised if there wasn't substantial material there. Maybe get to know some Samoans....

Yeah there are plenty of Polynesians here and several breadfruit cultivars of which I have 4 in the ground here. There are not that many trees though. They are not rare here but not common either.

I have a plant nursery and have orders for them in the 100's. The problem is getting them in the numbers needed. How many suckers does a tree produce? not many and how long would it take to get 1000 trees from root cuttings? A long time! As well as a shortage of material.   That is why tissue culture is the way to go.

The first and only time I tried propagating breadfruit from cuttings, I had about a 33% success. I setup a misting system that misted all of the cuttings very frequently. I am sure with more experimentation I could have increased the success rate. The USDA in Hawaii sent me the cuttings of the 9 different cultivars.

luketrollope

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #15 on: May 06, 2018, 02:09:56 AM »
As close as Australia is to Pacific islands and at least some polynesian residents I'd be surprised if there wasn't substantial material there. Maybe get to know some Samoans....

Yeah there are plenty of Polynesians here and several breadfruit cultivars of which I have 4 in the ground here. There are not that many trees though. They are not rare here but not common either.

I have a plant nursery and have orders for them in the 100's. The problem is getting them in the numbers needed. How many suckers does a tree produce? not many and how long would it take to get 1000 trees from root cuttings? A long time! As well as a shortage of material.   That is why tissue culture is the way to go.

The first and only time I tried propagating breadfruit from cuttings, I had about a 33% success. I setup a misting system that misted all of the cuttings very frequently. I am sure with more experimentation I could have increased the success rate. The USDA in Hawaii sent me the cuttings of the 9 different cultivars.

Hi Murahilin were they root cuttings or stem cuttings?

pineislander

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #16 on: May 06, 2018, 07:42:53 AM »
I have a plant nursery and have orders for them in the 100's. The problem is getting them in the numbers needed. How many suckers does a tree produce? not many and how long would it take to get 1000 trees from root cuttings? A long time! As well as a shortage of material.   That is why tissue culture is the way to go.
Sounds like you have to scale up your stock of trees to produce what the market demands through root cuttings or pay the price the German Mafia wants for their tissue culture. The investment in your time or money is just business. The Lychee nursery next door to me had several acres of trees to take air layers, they had to grow them to meet demand.
I understand much of nursery work is just selling on but somebody has to propagate. The scale of orders you mention brings you close to the market numbers you mention for TC plantlets. Plant out 100 for yourself close together on leased land if you haven't the space?

Thinking about it you'd need a very friable soil well mulched to produce abundant surface roots. A strategy to get a harvestable root system near the surface might also be to find a way to restrict the tree's root system away from deeper layers and close to the surface, perhaps something to restrict deep roots and promote surface roots?

The guy here mentions he mixes rooting hormone with "White Rum", (alcohol) which would disinfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2WHyHtMDEo

This FAO propagation manual describes a method of continuous harvest over one year of semi-hard cuttings from a single root cutting in a bed, and that air layers yield best from trees which haven't borne fruit.
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3085e.pdf

Did some checking it looks like these islanders may also supply TC plantlets, they worked with your government so that might be a channel to work through:
 http://www.spc.int/blog/spc-harvests-its-first-tissue-culture-breadfruit/

http://aciar.gov.au/files/pardi_factsheets.pdf

Good luck!

Mike T

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #17 on: May 06, 2018, 08:41:01 AM »
There are plenty around here. Varieties generally get better and become more seedless you get further from PNG and its breadnut ancestor. The Lapita people are credited with most of their dispersal. Those with just an odd seed are still pretty good.

DurianLover

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Re: The Best Breadfruits
« Reply #18 on: May 07, 2018, 02:12:20 AM »
Those are interesting observations durian lover. I was coming to the same conclusions actually. And Chuppa king let us know how true to type the seedling bread fruit is. From what I can gather a breadfruit seedling will be true to type if it was not cross pollinated by another variety as in it is isolated but I don't know if any one has tested this. It would be worthwhile to do so as that would be the easiest way to distribute the plant too get a good variety of  nearly seedless bread fruit that throws an odd seed.

It is hard to get the numbers needed via root cuttings and root suckers here in Australia. I have tried stem cuttings and out of about 500 cuttings I got about 5 plants so 1 in a hundred there! Big root suckers are best I have found as in the sucker is around 1 meter high then cut it right back and they re shoot.

But really tissue culture is the only way too go with bread fruit and the German mob who are in with the breadfruit institute seem to have a bit of a monopoly on that. I tried to get maafala tissue cultured in Australia but after taking 3 batches of propagating material to the lab 4 hours drive away   I gave up after they had no success with it. I wrote to global breadfruit asking for some advice but they never wrote back. I think they are in the "charity business"

I don't mind spending the money on the tissue culture plants from global bread fruit the problem for me is the import requirements for live plants to Australia are very tight and that is where the problem is here. Plants spend 6 months in quarantine and they charge per plant per day. Seeds on the other hand are easy enough if the plant is permitted.

Anyway it is such a good tree it is worth the effort to keep trying.
 

Seems like air layering is more reliable way to go. My young Maafala already has 4 offsprings via airlayers. If you are getting some 40-50 dollars per tree in Australia, maybe it's worth the effort. With Maafala you get dozens of branches at chest level or below, you can airlayer all you want.
I'm want to start cultivating Ma'afala via tissue culture starting next year. There are several export geared tissue culture labs around run by accomplished foreign biologists. I'm willing to make an effort, whatever it takes to nail the method. If we are successful, I'll be glad to share "lab secrets" :)

I also realized nobody answered original Dada's question. It's pretty obvious at this point that Maafala is the best. This has been discussed before, therefore seems like nobody is pointing the obvious to you. It has several combined advantages over all others. It's dwarf or semi-dwarf whatever you want to call it. It has long 8 months season ( in equatorial tropics).  It has more protein than other varieties and amino acids profile is more complex than other varieties. On top of that many claim it's the best tasting breadfruit they ever tried.

There is fruitarian farm of young people in Ecuador, you probably know him. Seems like he has successful smuggling operation, having acquired lots premium varieties of different species from around the world. Maybe he can help to get it from Florida?  You only need one tree to start. You can cut it to just 1.5 feet stick ( no leaves) and bareroot it for transport. Plant it immediately after arrival with a bag over it to keep moisture and new foliage should appear within several weeks.