Breadfruit is a future superfood – a nutrient-rich Caribbean crop resistant to climate change and widely sold in Britain Now scientists have proved a direct link between the staple and the UK’s grim colonial past ⤵️ 🔴 cahalmilmo
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William Bligh, who eventually rose the rank of vice admiral in the Royal Navy, survived the infamous mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789 to return to Polynesia with orders from the Admiralty to transport breadfruit to the Caribbean The findings, jointly made by American, Caribbean and Tahitian academics and reported in the journal Current Biology, show a common lineage between five varieties ofAs such, they close a controversial circle between Bligh’s 18century colonial enterprise to transplant breadfruit, which ironically failed in its original purpose, and the plant’s emergence as a source of respite against the dangers of hunger and economic insecurity posed by global warming.
It is one of the paradoxes of the grim colonial history of breadfruit that the first crops from the 678 breadfruit trees successfully transported by HMSwere rejected out of hand as inedible by the enslaved African labourers on the sugar plantations. Instead, the fruits were fed to pigs. Nonetheless, Bligh’s persistence in achieving his orders from London to ensure the exotic foodstuff – first identified by the botanist Joseph Banks when travelling with Captain Cook to Tahiti in 1769 – reached the Caribbean resulted in some longterm gains.
It was only on the second voyage that Bligh achieved his mission, depositing plants in St Vincent and Jamaica, from where they were spread throughout the Caribbean. It is now a staple of the cuisine on many islands, lending itself to being boiled, baked, fried and steamed for inclusion in dishes from porridge to puddings or as a flour .
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