On a hotter and hungrier planet, breadfruit is becoming a popular tree. It offers nutrient- and fiber-dense fruits that can feed a family and provide farming income, and with its long lifespan, it’s been heralded as a good way to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in trees, leaves and soil. But until recently, nobody had ever studied just how much carbon breadfruit trees could store. In a recent study published in Sustainability, researchers from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa found that the breadfruit trees growing in orchards in Hawai‘i display low carbon storage compared with similar tree species.The authors attribute this to its lightweight wood, a favorite among Hawaiians for building surfboards and canoes. But that doesn’t mean breadfruit shouldn’t be part of tropical climate solutions. “It’s easy to look at these results and say breadfruit doesn’t sequester that much carbon, but they offset that light [weight] wood with exceptional growth rates,” says co-author Noa Kekuewa Lincoln, an assistant professor of Indigenous crops and cropping systems at Mānoa. The researchers measured its carbon storage by comparing its metabolic rate with its total body mass. But Lincoln says these equations miss an important element: time. “When you look at those amalgamated equations … they’re just looking at the relationship between the size of the tree and how much carbon is stored,” Lincoln says. “The [equations] say nothing about: How long does it take for the tree to reach those sizes?” Island Harvest in Kohala, Hawaiʻi island, leverages…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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