Scientists Stress Food Security Measures

By BCNN6 on July 22, 2012 8:44 PM  

Long popular among Jamaicans for its roasted fruit - which also enjoys popularity as a key ingredient in soup - the roots and leaves of the breadfruit plant are also finding favour among local scientists for their role in stemming soil erosion.

In the Swift River Watershed area in Portland, where the demise of the banana industry has seen some farmers turn to cutting down trees for coal and lumber in search of alternative income-generating activity, soil erosion had threatened to detail the ecosystem. That was until the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica responded to a project proposal for a breadfruit tree-planting project in the area, to be carried out by the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) out of Mandeville, Manchester, and the College of Agriculture, Science and Education, which is based in Portland.

Dr. Vincent Wright - file 

Lead scientist, Dr Vincent Wright, dean of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences at the NCU, and a team were at Sunday's St Mary Breadfruit Festival sharing with the patrons the value of the work they started more than two years ago.

While admitting that it is early days yet, Wright was encouraged by the results so far.

He explained: "What I've been observing is that we have been having less soil erosion and less soil movement in these areas where we have planted breadfruit trees. We have also been having fewer landslides, but we have to take into consideration that we have other trees that are growing there, forest trees and such, and we encourage those to be there so that the watershed can be protected. We have also noticed that we have been getting less flooding in some of these areas where we have planted these trees."