Cultivating breadfruit trees is a developing business and a potential source of income for Pacific islands thanks to an initiative between the Hawai’i-based Breadfruit Institute of the National Tropical Botanical Garden and a private horticultural company, Cultivaris.

The Cultivaris company cultivate and distribute selected varieties of breadfruit from the extensive Breadfruit Institute’s seed resource.

The Institute then receives a per plant royalty for every plant sold that is split 50-50 with the country of origin of the particular breadfruit variety.

In the past three years Samoa has received a yearly royalty cheque for the Ma’afala breadfruit variety – the most recent cheque was for US$12,000 – a 6000 per cent increase from its first cheque for $200.

The director of the Breadfruit Institute, Dr Diane Ragone says Samoa is the first place to benefit from this arrangement but they hope it will be taken up by other islands.

“We have agreements with other countries and at the end of last year we were able to start propagating and selling their varieties as well,” she said.

“What’s exciting to me about it – is this is a landmark agreement because it really sets a standard for benefit sharing with countries in the Pacific for use of their indigenous crops – or intellectual property.”

Since the programme began in 2009, close to 40,000 trees have been distributed to 27 countries.

Dr Ragone says that is only a small amount of the potential production capacity.

“Billions of breadfruit trees could easily be produced by Cultivaris,” she said.

That hasn’t happened yet due to financial limitations.

The whole project is a non-profit venture, funded by grants and donations.

Up to this point, the project has been funded on a small scale by generous private philanthropists. To continue thriving they need more donations.

“That’s really the limiting factor in the whole project, being able to raise funds to initiate more tree planting projects,” Dr Ragone said.

“Because the interest is certainly there, we have request from about 60 countries that are interested in breadfruit for tree planting projects.

“We just don’t have the funding to do the work to purchase the trees and get the trees distributed.”

Dr Ragone says that it is a win, win, win situation.

“The monies we receive from this project go to support the cost of the institute and then the government, such as in this case, Samoa,” she said.

“Then the country receiving the breadfruit trees, they have the benefit of having a long living, healthy nutritious food for local consumption and income generation.”

The Breadfruit Institute hopes that new ways of using breadfruit will make the plant more attractive to potential buyers and appeal to communities across the world.

Breadfruit flour is of particular interest because it is naturally gluten free.

“They are looking at breadfruit flour, processing different things, maybe french fries or frozen breadfruit,” Dr Ragone said.

“Breadfruit waste product may be of use too, even the skins, they can provide a substitute for imported animal feed.”

And while breadfruit flour may not yet be on supermarket shelves across the world, Dr Ragone says the institute will continue to research and study the crop to promote its use as food as well as reforestation.

The Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawai’i was founded in 2003. The mission of the Breadfruit Institute is to promote the conservation and use of breadfruit for food and reforestation. The Institute is taking a leading role in the conservation of breadfruit diversity and ethnobotanical research documenting traditional uses and cultural practices involving breadfruit.

Cultivaris is a global horticultural company with a focus on new product development and distribution.