Volume 45, Issue 2, October 2015, Pages 264–272
Highlights
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- Breadfruit is an underutilized traditional crop bred by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific.
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- Breadfruit is high in starch, protein, vitamins and minerals.
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- A single breadfruit tree can provide basic nutrition as fresh fruit and flour to sustain a family of four.
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- A breadfruit tree lives 70–100 years with minimal input and can be grown as part of a sustainable agroforestry-based food system.
Abstract
More
than 80% of the world's hungry live in tropical and subtropical regions
where small increases in the costs of imported food, fuel and
fertilizer create periods of increased food insecurity. Over time, the
traditional knowledge and the traditional crops of the region are being
lost and diet-based diseases such as type II diabetes are increasing in
frequency. Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg,
has been a staple food and traditional crop in the Pacific for more than
3000 years and is now being cultivated for food security in the
Caribbean and other tropical regions. While there is some evidence to
suggest that a traditional diet based on breadfruit and other Pacific
staples can prevent onset of type II diabetes, detailed scientific
studies have not been conducted. One of the important issues is the wide
variability in reported nutritional composition of the fruit in studies
that included many different cultivars grown in widely different
ecosystems. We conducted a review of the nutritional data to determine
the best consensus for fruit nutrition. We identified 41 individual
studies that provide some proximate, carbohydrate, vitamin and/or
mineral data. A majority of the studies do not provide sufficient
botanical data such as species, cultivar name, or descriptive
information that would indicate the stage of maturity of the fruit or
factors of the local environment such as soil composition or rainfall.
Despite these shortcomings, compositional data for breadfruit suggests
that it has potential to mitigate type II diabetes and obesity in
Oceania and elsewhere in the tropics where breadfruit is grown. Further
studies will identify specific elite cultivars recommended for this
purpose.
Keywords
- Breadfruit;
- Artocarpus altilis;
- Food security;
- Underutilized crop;
- Type II diabetes
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