The Response of Breadfruit Nutrition to Local Climate and Soil: A Review

Abstract Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) has been promoted as an underutilized crop with tremendous potential to address global hunger and transform agricultural practices in the tropics. While traditionally confined to Oceania, breadfruit has been spread throughout the global tropics in the 250 years, with a significant increase in distribution and production over the last 20-30 years, bringing the crop into a vast array of growing conditions. We apply a systematic protocol to 33 previous studies representing 41 locations to explore the effect of abiotic environmental factors on nutritive aspects of breadfruit in three categories: proximate analyses, micro- and macro-nutrients, and vitamins. In applying linear and multi-variate regressions, data suggests that the abiotic factors play a strong role in the nutritive value of the crop and that each category of nutrition responds differently to the environment. In general, proximate analyses were most responsive to average annual precipitation, while vitamin concentrations respond to both climate and soil parameters; micro- and macro-nutrients show little correlation to climate or soils. We present findings in the context of previous research on abiotic influence of food nutrition.