The African breadfruit (Treculia africana, Decne) is an underexploited crop vital for food security and cherished by the Ibo ethnic group in Southeast Nigeria. It’s prevalent in West and Central Africa. This evergreen, large tree annually yields 20-30 pods with edible seeds, which are key ingredients in the Ibo tribe’s cuisine. Meals prepared from African breadfruit are highly nutritious, and its pods, leaves, and roots are employed in traditional medicine. The leaves are abundant in carbohydrates, phytochemicals, and minerals, contributing to its antioxidant, antimicrobial, and healing properties. The stem bark extract, known for its cough relief and antimicrobial properties, and the aqueous and ethanoic root extracts have antihyperglycemic properties and help prevent complications from type 2 diabetes. However, many of its medicinal and chemical properties remain scientifically unexplored, and it is less utilized compared to other Moraceae family members, like Artocarpus species.
Though African breadfruit is continuously used from Sierra Leone to Southwest Nigeria, including in Southern Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Congo Basin, the more recent introduction of seedless Pacific Island varieties is now common in Southwest Nigeria and coastal areas up to Senegal. In West Africa, African breadfruit trees, often found around homes and forests, indicating unplanned cultivation, are individually owned. This is reflective of the African custom where tree ownership is personal. The significance of African breadfruit was particularly evident during Ghana’s 1983 famine, being one of the few crops that survived the drought.
The Global Breadfruit Initiative provides improved, mainly seedless varieties of Artocarpus altilis and Artocarpus heterophyllus internationally, but Treculia africana is not yet included. They produce “plugs” from sterile growth media that bear fruit within 2-3 years, unlike cuttings which take 4-9 years. Scientific methods for large-scale propagation and mass production of breadfruit plants have been developed for global distribution, but the African breadfruit remains underutilized.