How to Grow Breadfruit

Artocarpus altilis · Also called: Ulu, Uru, Kuru, Mei, Beta, Sukun, Rimas, Fruta pan

A single bright green young breadfruit hanging from a thick stalk among very large dark glossy leaves deeply cut into long pointed lobes, its skin covered in small raised points, against a blue sky.

Photo: Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Breadfruit is one of the most productive food plants there is for the work it asks. A mature tree can give a hundred and fifty to two hundred fruits a year, each weighing a kilogram or two, for fifty years or more, from a plant that needs almost no yearly labour once it is established. It fed the Pacific for centuries and was deliberately carried to the Caribbean and West Africa, and it is grown today across the Pacific islands, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, southern India and parts of West Africa. Its problem is the exact opposite of most crops in this library. There is no shortage: there is a glut. The fruit all ripens within a few short weeks and keeps only a day or two after picking, so the real skill in breadfruit is not growing it but having somewhere for it to go.

Growing Breadfruit, Stage by Stage

1. Choose the site and get the land ready — Give it room, keep it away from buildings and drains, and make sure the ground drains.
2. Get your planting material — The best kinds have no seed, so take root suckers or root cuttings from a tree whose fruit you have eaten.
3. Plant it out — Plant at the start of the rains, shade and water the young tree, and protect it from animals and wind.
4. Water — Water young trees properly and then leave the mature tree mostly to the rain.
5. Weed, feed and keep it reachable — Keep the base clear, feed lightly, and prune to keep the fruit within reach of a pole.
6. Flowering and fruit set — Male and female flowers grow on the same tree, and most good kinds set fruit without any seed inside.
7. Watch for trouble — Most breadfruit trouble is fruit rot in wet weather, sap-feeding insects, and branches breaking under their own load.
8. Harvest — Pick mature but still firm, when drops of latex appear on the skin, and never let it fall to the ground.
9. Use it, preserve it, or lose it — Fresh breadfruit keeps one to three days, so this stage is really about what you arranged months ago.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: More fruit on the ground under the tree than anybody can eat, sell or give away, rotting within days of falling.

It likely means: Nothing is wrong. This is what a healthy breadfruit tree does: a hundred and fifty fruits or more in a few weeks, each keeping only a day or two.

Do this: Plan the outlet before you plant, because a mature tree's output cannot be reduced once it is growing.

If you see: Fruit that is soft and sweet when cut open rather than firm and starchy, and that will not hold together when boiled.

It likely means: It was picked too late. Breadfruit is a starch food while it is mature and firm, and becomes a sweet fruit if left to ripen fully.

Do this: Pick when the skin flattens between the segments and drops of white latex appear on it, while the fruit is still firm.

If you see: Fruit that goes brown and soft in patches within a day of picking, and rots before it can be sold.

It likely means: It was dropped or knocked. Breadfruit bruises very easily and a bruise becomes a rot within a day in a fruit that only keeps for two.

Do this: Catch the fruit in a net or padded basket on a pole rather than letting it fall to the ground.

If you see: Soft dark patches spreading across fruit while it is still hanging on the tree, usually in long wet spells, sometimes with a fuzzy growth.

It likely means: Fruit rot, which spreads in wet weather from fruit to fruit and from fallen fruit back up into the tree.

Do this: Pick off and destroy rotting fruit rather than leaving it hanging or lying beneath the tree.

If you see: Large branches split or torn off the trunk, often carrying fruit, after wind or simply under their own weight.

It likely means: Breadfruit wood is brittle and the fruit is heavy. This is the most common way a productive tree is damaged.

Do this: Prune to keep the tree low and wide rather than tall and top-heavy, which also keeps the fruit in reach.

If you see: White waxy clusters in the leaf joints and on the fruit stalks, with sticky leaves and a black sooty growth spreading over them.

It likely means: Mealybugs or scale insects feeding on the sap. The black growth is a mould living on the sugar they excrete rather than a disease of the tree.

Do this: Wash light attacks off with water, directing it into the leaf joints where they shelter.

If you see: A good seedless tree you want more of, and no suckers coming up around it to lift.

It likely means: Nothing is wrong. Suckers appear when a shallow root is disturbed, and an undisturbed tree may throw none for years.

Do this: Wound a shallow root deliberately with a spade a short distance from the trunk, which makes the tree throw new shoots there.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your fruit is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

The best kinds have no seeds. Grow them from root suckers.
Ten metres of space, and far away from walls, drains and pipes.
Plan where the fruit will go before you plant the tree.
Prune it low and wide. Fruit you cannot reach is fruit you lose.
Pick when the skin flattens and latex beads on it, while it is firm.
Soft means sweet, and sweet is no longer a starch food.
Cut with a pole and catch it. A dropped fruit rots in a day.
Rub oil on your hands first. The latex sticks to everything.
Fresh fruit keeps two days. That is the whole problem with it.
Dry it into flour or ferment it. That is what turns a glut into food.

Test Yourself: Identification

What is this round green fruit with a bumpy skin hanging among big cut leaves?

How do I know when to cut these down?

Are these several leaves or one, and why are they cut into fingers like that?

Honest Limits of This Guide

This guide gives timings in years and seasons rather than in months, because breadfruit is grown on both sides of the equator across the tropics and fruiting seasons differ completely between places. Your harvest begins when the skin flattens and latex beads on it.
Kinds of breadfruit differ enormously in fruit size, flavour, season and even leaf shape, and most of them are local and unnamed outside their own islands or districts. This guide cannot tell you which kind is best where you are; the tree whose fruit your neighbours already like is the best available evidence.
Preserving methods for breadfruit are strongly local, from Pacific pit fermentation to sun-dried flour, and each has its own techniques learned by doing. This guide points to them rather than teaching them, because they are traditions rather than recipes.
Most breadfruit grows on single trees around houses and never reaches a market or a statistic, so any production or yield figure here describes only a fraction of the crop and probably not the most important part.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Artocarpus altilis (EPPO code ABFAL) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for breadfruit — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Artocarpus altilis (breadfruit) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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