Content uploaded by Diane Ragone
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Diane Ragone on Apr 25, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
6ArcNews Summer 2012 esri.com/arcnews
More Top News
A map can be a powerful visual tool, but can a
map help solve world hunger, rejuvenate agri-
cultural soil, and prevent mosquito-borne in-
fections? Can a map help slow global warming
and spur sustainable economic development in
tropical regions around the world? Perhaps a
map alone can’t do these things, but a map can
help display the real potential of a very special
tree, the breadfruit.
Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is a tropical
tree originally from Papua New Guinea with a
rich and storied history. is starchy staple crop
has been grown in the Pacic for close to 3,000
years and was rst introduced to other tropical
regions more than 200 years ago. e trees are
easy to grow and thrive under a wide range of
ecological conditions, producing abundant, nu-
tritious food for decades without the labor, fer-
tilizer, and chemicals used to grow eld crops.
ese multipurpose trees improve soil con-
ditions and protect watersheds while providing
food, timber, and animal feed. All parts of the
tree are used—even the male owers, which are
dried and burned to repel mosquitoes. Because
of its multiple uses and long, productive,
Will Breadfruit Solve the World Hunger Crisis?
New Developments in an Innovative Food Crop
By Matthew P. Lucas and Diane Ragone, National Tropical Botanical Garden
Highlights
Using ArcGIS, monthly rainfall and
temperature data was represented
on maps.
ArcGIS was used to create a map
indicating areas of the globe ripe
for growing breadfruit.
The results can help guide potential
breadfruit-growing countries
in planning and implementing
planting projects.
Map showing zones of “best” and “suitable” growing conditions for breadfruit.
low-maintenance life, breadfruit was spread
throughout the tropical Pacic by intrepid voy-
agers. Hawaii is one of the many island chains
where breadfruit, or ulu in Hawaiian, was cul-
tivated as a major staple. It is tting that now
Hawaii is home to the headquarters of an
organization devoted to promoting the con-
servation and use of breadfruit for food and re-
forestation around the world.
e Breadfruit Institute, within the nonprot
National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), is
a major center for the tree’s conservation and re-
search of more than 120 varieties from through-
out the Pacic, making it the world’s largest
repository of breadfruit. As a result of this work,
the institute has received requests from numer-
ous countries seeking quality breadfruit variet-
ies for tree-planting projects. To address this
need, the Breadfruit Institute has developed in-
novative propagation methods, making it pos-
sible to produce and ship thousands, or even
millions, of breadfruit plants anywhere in the
world.
ese breadfruit tree-planting projects can
help alleviate hunger and support sustainable
agriculture, agroforestry, and income genera-
tion. Most of the world’s one billion hungry peo-
ple live in the tropics—the same region where
breadfruit can be grown. However, as Dr. Diane
Ragone, author and director of the Breadfruit
Institute, has learned, stating these facts and
illustrating them are two very dierent things.
A strong realization is made when a person
sees the data from the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization global map on
world hunger (www.fao.org/hunger) coupled
with a map showing areas suitable for growing
breadfruit.
It was originally this type of powerful visual
aid Ragone wanted when she began working
with NTBG’s GIS coordinator and coauthor
Matthew Lucas. To create such a map, Lucas
began by constructing a model within ArcGIS
using WorldClim (www.worldclim.org)
30-second resolution global raster datasets of
interpolated climate conditions compiled from
the past 50 years (Hijmans et al. 2005). With
the GIS, monthly rainfall and temperature data
was condensed into total annual rainfall, mean
annual temperature, and minimum and maxi-
mum annual temperature. en, the annual cli-
mate data was reclassied.
“Suitable” and “best” ranges of rainfall and
temperature were identied after referring to
the breadfruit prole written by Ragone for
Traditional Trees of Pacic Islands (Elevitch
2006). e best ranges in mean temperature
and rainfall were given a value of 2, whereas
suitable conditions were given a value of 1; con-
ditions that were deemed too low or high were
Different varieties of breadfruit are conserved in the world’s largest collection of bread-
fruit at the Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii. (Photo credit: © Jim Wiseman, courtesy of the
Breadfruit Institute)
This Hunger map is based on the 2011
Global Hunger Index score displayed per
country.
NGO Non-Governmental
Organization
7
More Top Newsesri.com/arcnews
given a value of -10. ArcGIS was used to com-
bine all the reclassied climate datasets. e -
nal output resulted in a global dataset that now
displayed areas deemed unsuitable for growing
breadfruit as < 0, areas assumed suitable with a
value of < 4 and > 0, and best areas with a value
of 4. is data was displayed in combination
with 2011 Global Hunger Index scores entered
into a vector dataset of countries. e resul-
tant map helps the viewer see the real potential
breadfruit development could have for tropical
regions.
With this new visual aid completed, Ragone
and Josh Schneider, cofounder of Cultivaris/
Global Breadfruit, a horticultural partner that
propagates breadfruit trees for global distribu-
tion, attended the World Food Prize sympo-
sium in October 2011. e breadfruit suitability
map was shared with Calestous Juma, professor
of the practice of international development
and director of the Science, Technology, and
Globalization Project at the Belfer Center for
Science and International Aairs at the Harvard
Kennedy School. Juma has extensive experience
and contacts in Africa.
e map was also shared with the former
president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo. It
was at Obasanjo’s invitation that Schneider vis-
ited Nigeria and met with government ocials
and researchers to discuss breadfruit planting
projects. Due to the relatively ne scale (1 km)
of the original datasets, a more detailed map
of Nigeria showing areas suitable for growing
breadfruit, along with roads and cities, was an
invaluable tool during discussions.
e World Food Prize meeting also spurred
other similar country-specic maps that
have been created and shared with organiza-
tions and individuals working in Haiti, Ghana,
Jamaica, Central America, and China. e maps
provide government ocials, foundations, and
potential donors with clear information about
the potential of breadfruit in specic areas.
e maps have spurred the question, What
other countries are best suited for growing
breadfruit? ArcGIS was used to combine the
breadfruit suitability data with a vector layer of
country borders. is not only resulted in a list
of countries that could possibly grow breadfruit
but also made it easy to identify and rank the
About the Authors
Matthew Lucas is the GIS coordinator for the
Conservation Department at the National
Tropical Botanical Garden. As a graduate of
the University of Hawaii, Hilo, Department of
Geography, Lucas hails from a conservation
background where he uses models and maps to
guide more ecient decision making and prob-
lem solving. Diane Ragone, PhD, is director of
the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical
Botanical Garden. She is an authority on the
conservation and use of breadfruit and has
conducted horticultural and ethnobotanical
studies in more than 50 islands in Micronesia,
Polynesia, and Melanesia.
For more information about the Breadfruit
Institute and NTBG, visit www.ntbg.org/
breadfruit. To help support the work of the
institute and breadfruit tree-planting proj-
ects, visit ntbg.org/breadfruit/donate/
plantatree.php. For more information on
Global Breadfruit and how you can help, visit
www.globalbreadfruit.com.
amount of area each country has that is suitable
and best for growing breadfruit.
It became clear that this map, the data, and
the ArcGIS methodology used to construct
it provided not only a powerful visual aid but
also a useful research tool. Armed with these
maps and the information they convey, Lucas
and Ragone are continuing to pair what has
been learned about breadfruit cultivation with
ArcGIS to help understand and display future
breadfruit potential. ey are currently working
on a climate change analysis that uses predict-
ed climate datasets of various future climate
models and scenarios in an attempt to quantify
areas that would have the highest likelihood
of sustainable breadfruit development. ey
are also working on publishing an online map
displaying global breadfruit growing potential.
Finally, it is the hope of the Breadfruit Institute
and NTBG that future breadfruit development
will be expanded and that ArcGIS will help
guide potential breadfruit-growing countries in
planning and implementing planting projects
of this very special tree.
Citations
Hijmans, R. J., S. E. Cameron, J. L. Parra,
P. G. Jones, and A. Jarvis (2005). “Very High
Resolution Interpolated Climate Surfaces for
Global Land Areas.” International Journal of
Climatology 25:1965–1978.
Ragone, D. (2006). “Artocarpus altilis (bread-
fruit).” In Traditional Trees of Pacic Islands.
Elevitch, C. R. (ed). Holualoa, HI: Permanent
Agroforestry Resources, 85–100. Available at
www.traditionaltree.org.
Von Grebmer, K., M. Torero, T. Olonbiyi, et al.
(2011). “2011 Global Hunger Index: e Challenge
of Hunger: Taming Price Spikes and Excessive
Food Price Volatility.” International Food Policy
Research Institute, Bonn. Available at www.ifpri.
org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi11.
pdf.
Breadfruit is extremely productive, producing an average of 150–200 and up to as many as 600 nutritious fruits per season.
