← Ologies with Alie Ward
Ologies with Alie Ward
Field Trip: A Hawaiian Breadfruit Rev‘ULUtion
00:37:00
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.
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- [00:00]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month?
- [00:05]
Alie Ward
With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs.
- [00:12]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Huh, that sounds easier than I thought.
- [00:14]
Alie Ward
You got this?
- [00:15]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Yeah, I do. Now where did I put my keys?
- [00:19]
Dolly Altafuna
You will find them where you left them.
- [00:23]
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Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC member NYSE, SIPC.
- [00:33]
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- [01:00]
Alie Ward
CT mobile.com oh hey, it's that friend who looks so good in hats. They never don't wear a hat. Alie 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 psychology 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 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 2000 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 made 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, we'll call them Landed then thought the islands. 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 10 such trees, which might take the labor of an hour, he would, as complete, 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 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. 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 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 Kekueva Lincoln, and research assistant and soil scientist who's working on her PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Dolly Altafuna, for this field trip. A Hawaiian breadfruit revolution. 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.
- [05:29]
Dolly Altafuna
Noah, you have a minute while we walk? Yeah, we'll walk and talk.
- [05:32]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Noah. Lincoln. He. Him.
- [05:35]
Dolly Altafuna
And what's the genus and species of the breadfruit that you study the most?
- [05:40]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Well, they're all the same species. They are Artocarpus altilis.
- [05:44]
Dolly Altafuna
Okay. Are you an artocarpaologist? Have you looked up to see if that's an ology? You knew I was gonna be here. Did you look up earlier?
- [05:51]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
I did not. You did not? I tend to lump it all under our broader work of ethnobotany or ethnobiology. I guess we want ology.
- [05:59]
Dolly Altafuna
I was gonna say. How dare you. With the etomy. You might as well come at me with an ix. I can't do anything with adernism.
- [06:04]
Alie Ward
And a quick primer. Breadfruit is in the fig family, and it's closely related to jackfruit. And there are three related species in 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 weigh as much as a watermelon, and they look like huge green dragon eggs. Though their varieties can be as tiny as apple, some of them also like blackberries. Breadfruit are a compound fruit, so each big old breadfruit is actually up to 2000 flowers fused into one mega fruit, which is why it looks spiky or scaled like lizard or, I suppose, dragon skin.
- [06:55]
Dolly Altafuna
Okay, breadfruit. What was the first time you ever ate it? Because you're born on Hawaii.
- [07:00]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Yes. So, I mean, we had it as kids, you know, but pretty sparsely.
- [07:04]
Dolly Altafuna
Okay.
- [07:05]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
When probably been working on breadfruit for about 10 years now. And I would say one of the things that was a epiphany to me was how challenging it is. Right. To change our personal habits and particularly around the way we eat.
- [07:19]
Alie Ward
Yeah.
- [07:20]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 breadfruit's one. It was a very challenging and deliberate switch that took a lot of years.
- [07:39]
Alie 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 Navigating a Sustainable Future in Hawaii. Before the western colonization of Hawaii by whalers and missionaries, the hundreds of thousands of people on the Hawaii 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.
- [08:17]
Dolly Altafuna
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?
- [08:26]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 age, about the size of a baseball, it's a lot like a vegetable. Okay, you can pickle it. People make things that taste like artichoke hearts, basically.
- [08:48]
Alie Ward
Oh, yum.
- [08:49]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [09:05]
Fidelity
You sure about that?
- [09:06]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [09:21]
Alie Ward
We kept ambling toward the dock where other scientists from the symposium had started to gather to board the boat to dinner.
- [09:28]
Dolly Altafuna
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?
- [09:34]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 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.
- [10:04]
Alie Ward
And for more on this, you can see NOAA'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 gotta 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 heats up. The trees like the warmth and grows.
- [10:39]
Dolly Altafuna
Best in the tropics or closer to the equator.
- [10:41]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [10:53]
Dolly Altafuna
Oh, wow.
- [10:54]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
So when you move up the mountain in Hawaii, Breadfruit will pretty much only grow below about a thousand feet, and above that, it starts getting too cold.
- [11:02]
Dolly Altafuna
Oh, I wouldn't even have thought of that, because the volcanoes are so tall, like the.
- [11:06]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
They are, yeah. You know, Mauna Kea is technically the tallest mountain on earth if you measure it from the sea floor 14,000ft 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.
- [11:21]
Dolly Altafuna
Oh, my God, that's crazy.
- [11:23]
Alie Ward
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 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 bonkers 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 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.
- [13:25]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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, 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.
- [13:48]
Dolly Altafuna
Yeah.
- [13:48]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
And so, you know, had very informal training in ethnobotany and a 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.
- [13:59]
Dolly Altafuna
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?
- [14:05]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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. In Hawaii. And yep, it's home.
- [14:24]
Dolly Altafuna
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 dew in the sun. But what was difficult about convincing communities that this was something worth investing in?
- [14:45]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [14:56]
Alie Ward
Did you know about it? Now you know about it.
- [14:59]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 gonna 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 gonna 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 wan grab a new food. I don't know how to cook or use or anything.
- [15:27]
Dolly Altafuna
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?
- [15:34]
Alie Ward
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 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. 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.
- [16:19]
Dolly Altafuna
And it's called ule. You said in Hawaiian.
- [16:22]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
In Hawaiian it's Ulu.
- [16:23]
Dolly Altafuna
Ulu, yeah. And so when did the idea for a revelation revolution with that in the middle?
- [16:29]
Alie Ward
Rev U lution. 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.
- [16:42]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 people and friends, you know, doing hard physical labor and oftentimes raining and. But then afterwards, right, 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 changed 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.
- [17:38]
Alie 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.
- [17:56]
Dolly Altafuna
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?
- [18:01]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Well, if you want to learn about breadfruit, I would definitely suggest going to eatbreadfruit.com that is the Hawaii 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.
- [18:29]
Alie Ward
Eatbreadfruit.com Again, that's eatbreadfruit.com favorite recipe.
- [18:35]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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, Lee and Perrin salt, pepper, garlic, you know, a little bit of oregano, maybe slam those out into patties and then pan fry them.
- [18:52]
Alie Ward
Nice.
- [18:52]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
That's a good one.
- [18:53]
Dolly Altafuna
Sounds like a latke.
- [18:54]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Yes, a little bit like a latke, but less oily.
- [18:57]
Dolly Altafuna
Yeah, good to know.
- [18:59]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [19:30]
Alie Ward
I 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 mousse and it Was great. It was like a frozen yogurt, custard texture and had this nutty flavor. I loved it.
- [19:47]
Dolly Altafuna
And a complete protein too.
- [19:49]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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.
- [20:33]
Alie 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. 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 Oceana, 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 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 this paper titled against the Tide of 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 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.
- [23:02]
Dolly Altafuna
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, must be hard to put your laptop away at night and be like, okay, it's time for me to just kick back.
- [23:20]
Alie Ward
Yeah.
- [23:20]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
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 lychee and, yeah, all sorts of goodies.
- [23:33]
Dolly Altafuna
Thank you so much for doing this.
- [23:34]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
This is great. Absolutely amazing.
- [23:36]
Alie 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@eatbreadfruit.com and we'll link in the show notes. So thank you to sponsors of the show for making that possible.
- [24:21]
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Alie Ward
Okay. You know, sometimes you eat something and you're like, ah, feel so Much better. And other times you eat a meal and you're like I want to go nap on the couch and I can't remember my own name or I need 10 desserts right now. That could be your glucose talking. My glucose is very loud. My insulin floods in response to sugar and then it crashes and I feel like garbage. But introducing Lingo. This is a biowarable, it's from Abbott and it tracks your glucose levels in real time. And then on an app it gives you insights into how high they went, how much they crashed, how well managed your glucose is throughout the day. So I tried Lingo. I have it on my arm right now and it's awesome for me. I know that my blood sugar greatly impacts my life and I can look at that and see the data. I love that Lingo has science backed recommendations to eat in a way that works better for you personally. So to see how your body responds to food and learn what you can do to improve your metabolism, try Lingo. It starts at $49 for a two week plan, no prescription needed and for a limited time you can save 10% on your first order with the code ologies@hello lingo.com the Lingo Glucose system is for users 18 years and older, not on insulin. It's not intended for digest diagnoses of diseases including diabetes. For more information please visit Halalingo.com I pride myself on being the friend that people text links to and they go is this real? And I go no. And I'm proud of that skepticism. And it's also helpful when it comes to health hacks. I can spot a too good to be true health hack from a mile away. So can you. Ritual knows that every good skeptic deserves a multivitamin that exceeds our standards. They have a clinically backed Essential for Women 8:19 plus multivitamin. It has high quality traceable key ingredients. I love that Ritual multivitamins are vegan. They're gluten and major allergen free. Also, Ritual is a certified B Corp and a female founded B Corp. They hold themselves accountable to finances but also the health of people and our planet. I have a checklist every morning of things that I do. One of them is sit down with a cup of tea and schedule out my day.
- [26:53]
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Another is honestly taking supplements moments because.
- [26:55]
Alie Ward
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- [28:30]
Alie Ward
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.
- [28:43]
Fidelity
And it's absolutely beautiful. All of it.
- [28:47]
Dolly Altafuna
Allie, I'm guessing you don't have very good service to make a. I don't. I can try and see. I've got one bar. Hey Dolly. Hey, it's Allie.
- [28:58]
Alie Ward
Yeah, we were lost.
- [28:59]
Dolly Altafuna
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. Awesome. Thank you so much. See you in a sec.
- [29:15]
Alie Ward
Bye.
- [29:15]
Dolly Altafuna
Hi. We're really close. Is that her truck?
- [29:18]
Yeah.
- [29:19]
There we go. Yeah. Okay, cool. She waved.
- [29:21]
Hi Dolly.
- [29:23]
Oh look, this looks like an orchard on our left.
- [29:26]
Fidelity
Oh, she's opening the gate.
- [29:29]
Dolly Altafuna
Hi Dolly. So first off, can, can you tell me your first and last name?
- [29:34]
Dolly Altufunga.
- [29:36]
So we're, 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?
- [29:43]
We have 30 trees.
- [29:44]
30 trees.
- [29:45]
And there's four varieties plus the ancestry. So five in total.
- [29:51]
If someone comes in here and is.
- [29:52]
Alie Ward
Like, I don't even know what a.
- [29:53]
Dolly Altafuna
Red fruit is, what do you show them?
- [29:55]
The fruit first.
- [29:56]
Okay, cool.
- [29:57]
Yeah. So these ones are ready. They're matured.
- [30:00]
And so do they get smoother when they're mature like that?
- [30:03]
Yes. When they're smaller, there's a lot spikier. These are different varieties. This is the Hawaiian variety, 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.
- [30:21]
Alie Ward
These are the size of an oblong cantaloupe or a large baby's head.
- [30:26]
Dolly Altafuna
And when you say ancestry, does that mean it's an older cultivar?
- [30:30]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Yeah, old.
- [30:31]
Dolly Altafuna
The ancestry first kind.
- [30:33]
And then is there an advantage to having different cultivars?
- [30:37]
Alie Ward
Like, are these easier to grow or.
- [30:38]
Dolly Altafuna
Harvest, or do they take, like, less time to mature?
- [30:41]
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 they're different in flesh, too. The smaller one, which is our mafala, 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.
- [31:04]
And then what about the ancestry one?
- [31:06]
So. 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 so.
- [31:17]
That you'll take the seeds and then you'll use those to make more trees. How old are these trees?
- [31:21]
These are seven years old. Seven, eight years old. They were planted in 2017. So this is one of seven Freshwood sites we have around the islands.
- [31:31]
Alie 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.
- [31:43]
Dolly Altafuna
What environment is this? Is this a sea spray? Is this a jungle?
- [31:47]
It has more rain. It gets more rain compared to other sites and good soil.
- [31:51]
Alie Ward
I visited this farm with my wonderful in laws and your pod mom, Jarrett, who asked about some patches of dried, sappy stuff.
- [31:58]
Fidelity
What's the significance of this? Kind of, like, almost looks like Syrup or something that dried on the outside.
- [32:02]
Dolly Altafuna
So they call that a latex. It's not only on the fruit but throughout the whole tree. But that's one indicator of maturity.
- [32:11]
Alie 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 2 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 caulking and bird trapping 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 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 a thousand 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.
- [33:26]
Dolly Altafuna
It goes on to like January, February, just because I think it gets perfect rain, good soil, just a good site.
- [33:34]
Do you know like what's the biggest.
- [33:35]
Alie Ward
Breadfruit you guys have harvested?
- [33:37]
Dolly Altafuna
Oh, definitely the Ulu, Hawaii. Yeah, it's about four kilograms. It's big. It's like bigger than my head. Huge, huge fruits. We get off from those.
- [33:47]
Alie Ward
That's like eight pounds, like the size of a bowling ball.
- [33:51]
Dolly Altafuna
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 retumen Fijian side. Yellow flesh fruit, really good for making ulu chips.
- [34:06]
And then kind of like an ostrich skin texture on the outside.
- [34:09]
Uh huh. It also goes smoother in texture. When it goes yellow, it's matured.
- [34:14]
Alie Ward
Then you know it's just like a green light.
- [34:16]
Dolly Altafuna
You're like, okay, sweet. Get that. How do you get up there?
- [34:19]
So we maintain our trees by pruning. Every year you gotta at least have 12ft 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.
- [34:34]
How do you make sure that there's not a bunch of breadfruit on the ground just being wasted?
- [34:37]
So I try to. Every time I harvest, I would know, oh, these 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.
- [34:50]
Oh, and they can ripen off the tree?
- [34:52]
Yes, they can.
- [34:53]
Oh. Kind of like a banana or apples. Have you always studied fruit?
- [34:57]
No. How did you do this? So I started with Noah Lincoln as a master's student from Samoa. I came here in 2018 on a scholarship, but I was mainly focusing on soil fertility. And then he had this grant on breadfruit, and I jumped it. And then I'm from Samoa. We eat ulu all the time. So, yeah, it's perfect.
- [35:17]
Do you have a way that you like it prepared?
- [35:20]
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.
- [35:35]
Alie Ward
Okay, let's say that you plant one, but you're hungry and impatient.
- [35:39]
Fidelity
And it takes how long for a tree to produce fruit in the first place?
- [35:43]
Dolly Altafuna
From like three to five years.
- [35:44]
Alie Ward
You'll get fried fruits.
- [35:46]
Dolly Altafuna
And then I read in literature that it can go up to 50 years. It will still produce.
- [35:51]
Fidelity
That's just so much year round. Are there ways to preserve it for the off months?
- [35:56]
Dolly Altafuna
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 makes use of all that harvest. They froze it, they dry it, they procook it. Yeah, they do all sorts of kinds of stuff. Yeah. Flour.
- [36:16]
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?
- [36:26]
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. And good soil. They'll be happy. They'll be happy.
- [36:39]
Alie 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.
- [37:01]
Dolly Altafuna
Have bread, fruit and be patient with them for a couple of years, right?
- [37:05]
Yes. Then three to five years you'll have fruits.
- [37:09]
Alie Ward
So Dolly says that these ones can grow up to 50ft tall. But some breadfruit trees can be 85ft 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 12ft high, just for. For practical ladder climbing reasons. I mean, you try getting breadfruit out of something the size of a building.
- [37:40]
Dolly Altafuna
Ever been bonked on the noggin by a breadfruit?
- [37:43]
Nope.
- [37:44]
Knock on breadfruit trees, right?
- [37:46]
Alie Ward
I imagine you'd have to look up.
- [37:48]
Dolly Altafuna
If you're picking them, make sure nothing's coming down.
- [37:50]
Yeah, yeah. You have to just make sure you're holding it so it doesn't drop and make sure no one. It might fall on there.
- [37:58]
Alie Ward
Do they shatter when they drop?
- [37:59]
Dolly Altafuna
Like if they're ripe?
- [38:00]
If they're ripe, they, they like. Yeah.
- [38:04]
And then you're picking up red fruit off the ground.
- [38:06]
Yes, but we take them before that.
- [38:08]
Stage so they're not just goopy goops.
- [38:11]
Alie 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 it was doing a great job.
- [38:25]
Dolly Altafuna
So I did bring some fruit pickers in case you guys want to pick some ulu and take with you.
- [38:31]
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.
- [38:40]
Yes, right.
- [38:41]
Unless you want a concussion. Look at that. Yeah, it just plunks it right down like a little baby in the grass. Hello. Cool. That's so heavy.
- [38:54]
Yeah, you need muscles for this kind of work.
- [38:57]
Oh my gosh.
- [38:58]
Noah Kekueva Lincoln
Yeah.
- [38:58]
Dolly Altafuna
Who needs to go to the gym, right?
- [39:00]
I know.
- [39:01]
Alie Ward
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.
- [39:15]
Dolly Altafuna
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. Great.
- [39:28]
Yeah, the fieldwork situation.
- [39:31]
The gym work, you mean?
- [39:32]
Yeah, the gym work and the field work. This is great. Thank you so much for letting us come and check this out.
- [39:37]
Yeah, thank you for having me.
- [39:38]
We got to pick some and see them picked. I'm excited to eat them.
- [39:43]
Alie Ward
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 Altafuna for hanging out on a dock and in an orchard respectively. And to find out more about their work and their mission, you can ch check out eatbreadfruit.org and we'll also link to the Chef Hui fun donation page for them. And we are at Instagram and on blueskylogies and I'm at Alieward on both. Smallogies are our shorter kid friendly versions of classic episodes and they are in their own feed. You can find smallogies wherever you get podcasts. Kids Safe Ologies Merch is@ologiesmerch.com All of this is linked in the show notes and also@alieward.com Ology Breadfruit Aaron Talbert, Admin Zoologies Podcast Facebook group. Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. 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 shared sleeper for going on this breadfruit adventure in Hawaii and the USC Storymakers 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 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.
- [41:31]
Allie Ward
Oh my God.
- [41:32]
Dolly Altafuna
This is heaven. Oh, my God. Hi, babies.
- [41:35]
Alie Ward
Hi, babies.
- [41:36]
Dolly Altafuna
They're friendly.
- [41:39]
Alie Ward
I loved every second. This farm trip was already a success by that point. Okay, thanks for coming along on the field trip.
- [41:47]
Dolly Altafuna
I hope you had fun.
- [41:48]
Alie Ward
Okay, bye. Bye.
- [41:49]
Dolly Altafuna
Pachydermatology Homeology Cryptozoology Litology Nanotechnology Meteorology Olfactology Maplity Serology Selenology.
- [42:09]
Fidelity
You know Skipper, these breadfruit plants are fantastic.
- [42:12]
Allie Ward
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- [42:39]
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