Artocarpus heterophyllus

Artocarpus heterophyllus

The jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam.) is an arboreal species belonging to the Moraceae family.

Systematics –
From a systematic point of view it belongs to:
Eukaryota domain,
Kingdom Plantae,
Magnoliophyta division,
Class Magnoliopsida,
Rosales Order,
Moraceae family,
Genus Artocarpus,
Species A. heterophyllus.
The terms are synonyms:
– Artocarpus brasiliensis Gómez;
– Artocarpus brasiliensis Ortega;
– Artocarpus integer Auct.;
– Artocarpus integra;
– Artocarpus integrifolia var. glabra Stokes;
– Artocarpus integrifolius Auct.;
– Artocarpus integrifolius var. heterophylla (Lam.) Pers.;
– Artocarpus jaca Lam.;
– Artocarpus maxima Blanco;
– Artocarpus nanca Noronha;
– Artocarpus philippensis Lam.;
– Polyphema jaca (Lam.) Lour.;
– Sitodium cauliflorum Gaertn..

Etymology –
The term Artocarpus derives from the Greek ἄρτος ártos pane and from καρπός carpόs fruit: due to the edible infructescence rich in starch; the Artocarpus altilis is commonly called breadfruit (breadfruit, arbre à pain, árbol del pan).
The specific epithet heterophyllus comes from the Greek ἕτερος héteros variable, different, irregular and from φύλλον phýllon leaf, lamella: which has leaves or lamellas irregular or of different shapes.

Geographic Distribution and Habitat –
Artocarpus heterophyllus is a plant native to southern Asia, particularly the tropical regions of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma. This plant has been spread to many other tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, where it is grown for its edible fruit.
The natural habitat is in the humid tropical forests of South Asia where it can be found both in the coastal plains and in the hilly areas up to an altitude between 450 and 1,200 meters, in hot and humid climates where it grows best in areas with a annual average between 20°C and 30°C and deep, well-drained soils.

Description –
Artocarpus heterophyllus is a tree with a robust trunk and a deep tap root. The plant can reach a height of 10-20 meters, with a dense crown and bright green leaves.
The trunk, which is usually up to 80 cm in diameter but can reach 200 cm, is usually without buttresses, but can sometimes have small buttresses.
The leaves are perennial, large, glossy and oval in shape with a leathery texture.
The plant is dioecious, meaning it has male and female flowers on separate plants.
The flowers are small and yellow-green. They develop into inflorescences, which hang directly from the main trunk or larger branches of the tree. The infructescences consist of numerous male and female flowers, arranged on different parts of the tree. The male and female flowers are united in inflorescences which are also unisexual.
The male flowers are very small and gathered in long hanging tufts. Each male flower has a structure made up of numerous stamens that produce pollen.
The female flowers are larger than the male flowers and are found within the infructescences. Each female flower has an inferior ovary, which develops into a fruit when fertilized. The ovary is surrounded by a series of yellow-green bracts which give it a distinctive appearance.
After fertilization, the female flowers transform into large loaf-shaped fruits, which can reach a considerable size and weigh several kilos.
The fruit is oval in shape and originates from the development of the female inflorescence; it can exceed 40 cm in diameter and weigh 30 kg or more. It is a large false compound fruit in which the single fruits derive from the ovary of the flowers of the inflorescence and each one surrounds a seed, which is also edible. The color of the ripe skin is dark yellow, that of the pulp is generally deep yellow, but also orange in colour.
Each fruit contains numerous seeds within the pulp.

Cultivation –
Artocarpus heterophyllus is a fruiting plant cultivated in various tropical countries of South America, Africa and Asia. It has also proved resistant to various subtropical microclimates, such as southern Florida, where temperatures never drop below −1 °C. However, even if it survives, already at temperatures of a few degrees above zero Celsius there is damage to the organoleptic qualities of the fruit, so that its fruit cultivation is not possible even in the most sheltered areas of the Mediterranean basin, where the tree once adult it could survive in the open air, but where fruit production would be irrelevant.
For cultivation, therefore, it is a plant that grows best at an altitude of less than 1,000 metres, with an average annual temperature between 24 and 28 °C, an average maximum temperature of 32-35 °C, an average minimum temperature of 16-20 °C, and an average annual rainfall between 900 and 4,000 mm uniformly distributed throughout the year.
It prefers a climate without a dry season, but can tolerate a short dry season.
Trees can bear fruit at latitudes up to 30° from the equator, with good yields up to 25° away.
From the pedological point of view it grows in many types of soil but prefers a deep and well drained alluvial soil, with a pH in the range of 5.5 – 7.5, tolerating 4.3 – 8.
Young plants need some shade, but need increasing light levels as they mature.
There are two main groups of cultivars, one group with soft skins while the other with hard skins.
Plants can produce their first crop within 3 years of seed germination, but 8 years is a more common time frame.
Flower and fruit load is initially low and improves with increasing size and age; 2 year old trees produce about 25 flowers and 3 fruits; 5-year-old trees bear up to 840 flowers and 6-year-old trees 1,500 flowers.
However, only 15-18 fruits develop due to the low production of female inflorescences (about 0.6-5% of the total number of inflorescences).
Young trees bear more male than female flowers in a ratio of 4:1; female flower production increases with age. A 2:1 male-to-female ratio produces 250 fruit per tree, and as trees age, fruit productivity decreases.
In suitable environments, trees produce fruit and flowers throughout the year, but in areas with distinct wet and dry seasons, flowering occurs in the rainy season.
In young trees the fruits are usually borne on the branches and in older trees, on the trunks and roots.
In general it is a fairly rapid growing plant, reaching a height of 3 meters and a crown diameter of 2 meters at 2 years of age. In 5 years the height of the tree reaches 7 meters and the diameter of the crown 4 meters; 20-year-old trees are about 60 feet tall, as tree growth slows with age.
Propagation occurs by seed which, under suitable conditions, germinates within 10 days of sowing and 80-100% of germination is reached within 35-40 days of sowing.
The seed quickly loses vitality and therefore should be sown as soon as possible.
The seedlings produce a long taproot and can be difficult to transplant, so it is best to place them in deep pots as soon as they are large enough to handle and plant them out in the open as soon as possible. The seed germinates best at a temperature of 24 – 27 °C.
Propagation can also be via root cuttings.

Customs and Traditions –
Artocarpus heterophyllus is known by various names. The most used term, jackfruit comes from the Portuguese jaca, which in turn comes from the Malayalam language term chakka (Malayalam: chakka pazham), when the Portuguese arrived in India at Kozhikode (Calicut) on the Malabar coast (Kerala) in 1499. Later the Malayalam name ചക്ക (cakka) was recorded by Hendrik van Rheede (1678–1703) in the Hortus Malabaricus, vol. III in Latin. Henry Yule translated the book into Mirabilia descripta: the wonders of the Orient by Jordanus Catalani (fl.  1321–1330). This term is in turn derived from the Proto-Dravidian root kā(y) (“fruit, vegetable”).
Other names are: jacareúba or nangka in Portuguese.
In addition, the English common name “jackfruit” was used by the physician and naturalist Garcia de Orta in his 1563 book Colóquios dos simples e drugs da India. Centuries later, the botanist Ralph Randles Stewart suggested that it be named after William Jack (1795–1822), a Scottish botanist who worked for the East India Company in Bengal, Sumatra and Malaya.
This plant has been independently domesticated in South Asia and Southeast Asia, as indicated by Southeast Asian names that are not derived from Sanskrit roots. It was probably first domesticated by the Austronesians in Java or the Malay Peninsula. The fruit was later introduced to Guam via Filipino settlers when both were part of the Spanish Empire.
It is the national fruit of Bangladesh and the state fruit of Tamilnadu and Kerala.
This plant is cultivated for its fruit, the largest naturally occurring fruit that grows from trees.
In food use, the fruits are eaten raw or cooked in various ways.
The pulp of young fruits is rich in carbohydrates and is usually cooked as a vegetable.
The fruit becomes sweeter as it ripens, as some of the carbohydrates are converted into sugars. It is often eaten raw at this stage, but is also cooked as a vegetable.
The rind of the fruit produces a good jelly. A fruit crate is huge, it can be 30 to 50 cm long, weigh up to 20 kg and contain up to 500 individual golden colored fruits.
They have a rather strong smell which some people don’t like, although they can be dried when the smell is less.
There is a white, sticky latex that can prevent the separation of the edible part of the fruit that can stick to your hands, but it can be removed using cooking oil.
Even the seeds can be eaten cooked. They are delicious boiled or roasted, with a flavor and texture similar to chestnuts.
They can be ground into a powder and used to make biscuits.
The seeds have a high starch content and about 5% protein.
While boiling the seeds, the water is sometimes changed 2 or 3 times to remove an unpleasant smell.
Also the very young fruits and leaf buds are cooked into soups and stews.
Finally, the young male flowers are eaten mixed with peppers, sugar, salt, etc.
This plant has also found use in the medicinal field.
The ashes of the leaves, with or without oil, are used to treat ulcers, diarrhea, boils, stomachaches and wounds.
The pulp and seeds of the fruit are indicated as a refreshing tonic. Also the seeds are said to be an aphrodisiac.
The sap is an antisyphilitic and a vermifuge while it seems that the wood has sedative properties and that its marrow is capable of inducing abortion.
A decoction of the root is used to relieve fever, treat diarrhea, skin diseases and asthma.
The bacteriolytic activity of the latex is the same as that of papaya latex. The dried latex produces artotenone, a compound with a marked androgenic action; it can also be mixed with vinegar to aid in the healing of abscesses, snakebites, and glandular swellings.
Other uses include agroforestry.
The tree has a wide-ranging root system and can be planted to control flooding and soil erosion on farms, and is also suitable in reforestation projects. The tree is often used in mixed plantings. It can be used as a shade tree for coffee, planted with coconut palms, has been used as intercropping in durian orchards, and with mango and citrus.
Young jackfruit orchards can be intercropped with annual cash crops such as bananas, sweet corn, and peanuts.
Other uses concern the use of the inner part of the bark or raffia, which is occasionally transformed into rope or cloth.
The latex obtained from the trunk and branches produces 71.8% resin, consisting of 63.3% fluavilles (yellow) and 8.5% albanes (white). These resins can be valuable in paints.
Latex is commonly used as an adhesive for repairing broken china or shards, caulking boats, patching bucket holes, and catching birds. In India and Brazil, latex serves as a substitute for rubber.
The bark produces a dark resinous gum, soluble in water, which contains 3.3% tannin. When boiled with alum, sawdust or heartwood shavings produce a rich yellow dye used in the silk and cotton robes of Buddhist priests.
The wood is yellow at first, then turns red. It is classified as medium hard wood. It is resistant to termite attack and fungal and bacterial decay and is easy to season, plus it takes to polish beautifully. While not as strong as teak, it is considered superior to that wood for furniture, construction, turning and inlay work, masts, oars, tools, and musical instruments. The wood is used extensively in India and Sri Lanka and is also exported to Europe.
The roots of old trees are very popular for carvings and frames.
Wood is used as fuel.

Method of Preparation –
The fruits of Artocarpus heterophyllus are eaten fresh or canned for export, dehydrated or fried in the form of chips.
In some countries, the juice is fermented to make an alcoholic beverage. The slightly ripe fruits, on the other hand, can be reduced to flour for various exotic specialties, or even cooked like the fruits of the congener breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis). Even the large seeds are used to be cooked in a similar way to chestnuts.
The flavor is a mixture of apple and pineapple, with a vanilla aftertaste, delicious in the best varieties; when cooked for over an hour it takes on a taste similar to that of porchetta.

Guido Bissanti

Sources
– Acta Plantarum – Flora of the Italian Regions.
– Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
– GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
– Useful Tropical Plants Database.
– Conti F., Abbate G., Alessandrini A., Blasi C. (ed.), 2005. An annotated checklist of the Italian vascular flora, Palombi Editore.
– Pignatti S., 1982. Flora of Italy, Edagricole, Bologna.
– Treben M., 2000. Health from the Lord’s Pharmacy, Advice and experiences with medicinal herbs, Ennsthaler Editore.

Photo source:
– https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/268711898/original.jpg

Attention: The pharmaceutical applications and alimurgical uses are indicated for informational purposes only, they do not in any way represent a medical prescription; we therefore decline all responsibility for their use for curative, aesthetic or food purposes.