Breadfruit

Micronesia has dozens of local breadfruit varieties – baked, boiled or fermented in pits, the fruit is the basis of traditional cooking.

Breadfruit is a tree growing to about 20 m, with large, deeply lobed leaves and milky sap. Its round fruits, with green, rough skin, have starchy flesh that resembles bread when baked. Varieties differ in when they ripen, so on the high islands fruit is harvested for much of the year. Surplus fruit was traditionally fermented in leaf-lined pits in the ground, producing a long-lasting, sour paste.

Significance in the country

On Pohnpei and in Chuuk breadfruit is the most important food tree – the first fruits of the season are presented as gifts to the chiefs, and the fermented paste was a reserve for times of typhoon and famine. Local organisations now promote a return to traditional varieties as a healthy alternative to imported rice.

Where it grows

On all the high islands – Pohnpei, Kosrae, Weno and other islands in the Chuuk Lagoon, and Yap – as well as on many atolls.

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