Quick Action Lands Breadfruit Trees in Uganda

In just six days, a masterful team facilitated the procurement and delivery of 288 baby breadfruit trees in Uganda. TTFF East Africa representative Kamya Musigire will plant them in mother gardens and multiply them via air-layering. This shipment of trees will birth thousands more!

It started with a message from a volunteer named Nancy Bardon telling us she was visiting Uganda the following week and offering to take plants. Fortunately, we have an agreement with National Tropical Botanical Garden to fund a number of breadfruit trees per year. If we didn’t have that, it would be nearly impossible to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity like this one.

Luckily, TTFF East Africa representative Kamya Musigire had previously obtained a phytosanitary certificate from USDA for the Plant Protection Organization in Uganda. Also necessary to clear customs is a permit to import plant material from Republic of Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. Yvette Orozco and Carolyn Sluis of Tissue Grown Corporation in California snapped into action to get that.

Our friends at Tissue Grown prepared the breadfruit plants, and Nancy, who lives nearby the facility, picked them up and flew with them nearly 10,000 miles! Kamya offered to make the trip to Entebbe International Airport in Kampala. Nancy got through customs and met with Kamya seamlessly.

Now Kamya is hardening the plants. He will plant them and propagate them by air-layering. By producing thousands more breadfruit trees, we will be able to distribute them to many more Ugandans. We currently have 65 applicants in this country alone waiting for us to have trees available. It’s so exciting to see a country previously unfamiliar with breadfruit recognizing its extraordinary benefits.

As you can see, it takes careful planning, knowledgeable partners, and generous donors and volunteers to make this important work happen. Thank you all!