Post-harvest Products
Breadfruit is a wonderful fruit, tasty and nutritious. When picked from the tree and roasted fresh, it’s a delicious treat. During breadfruit season there are dozens, maybe hundreds of fruit available from a single tree! Too much to eat, no matter how delicious. The excess fruit can be sold in the marketplace, and we see active local and export markets in the fresh fruit.
However, any excess fruit can’t be stored for very long. With breadfruit, the food quality deteriorates within a few days. Instead, we encourage the processing of the excess fruit into post-harvest products with a long shelf life, for example breadfruit chips, or flour, or porridge. Breadfruit when dried or otherwise processed can be stored for months, up to a year or more. Local groups including Jeremie agronomists in Haiti and Diamond Ridge Processing in Jamaica, are producing high quality breadfruit flour. And we’re encouraging other groups to join in. There will be plenty of fruit available to process as our trees come into maturity. And there’s a strong demand already.
TTFF is developing a number of recipes for breadfruit flour. Click here for recipes. We’ve tested these recipes and they are delicious.
Perhaps the most important product in the near future is a breadfruit based porridge. A delicious instant porridge mix is made from breadfruit flour together with other ingredients such as cornmeal flour and dried coconut. The dry powder is a near-instant porridge mix with a long shelf life. Just mix with water and cook for a few minutes, and you have a tasty and delicious hot cereal. TTFF is supplying instant porridge mix to six schools in a pilot program in Jamaica, and soon also in Haiti. Already we know the schoolchildren love the porridge … they lick the bowl clean!
Markets
TTFF is working to develop markets, first locally, and ultimately for export. We have had conversations with schools, hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets. Anecdotally, we think the market for breadfruit products, whether chips, flour or other products, is potentially huge.