The humble breadfruit — a staple food throughout the Pacific but often dismissed in Hawaii as bland and unappetizing — is getting a second look here not only for its extraordinary nutritional value but its potential as an agricultural gold mine.

The University of Hawaii Pacific Business Center Program is working to promote and expand the use of breadfruit throughout the Pacific and is aiming to create what its director says could be a multibillion-dollar industry in Hawaii.

"It’s a no-brainer," said Failautusi Avegalio Jr., director of the program’s Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative. "It has the potential to exceed any other product in the Pacific or the world."

The project, which last month won a national award from the University Economic Development Association, is working to harness the agricultural power of the Pacific nations that grow breadfruit in a move to take advantage of the fruit’s natural gluten-free status.

The plan is to find some way to join the growing worldwide gluten-free and health food product market, with Honolulu being a major processing and export hub. Demand for gluten-free products in the U.S. alone is projected to hit $15.5 billion in 2016.

Not only that, Avegalio said, but breadfruit tree sap is 100 percent organic latex — an especially lucrative market — and the breadfruit flower contains powerful chemical compounds more potent than those used in the leading synthetic insect repellents.

Meanwhile, the breadfruit, known as ulu in Hawaiian, has come under a recent global spotlight of publicity, ballyhooed as a wonder food, high in protein and having the potential to feed the world.

Stories have appeared this year in a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, New Scientist and, most recently, Time, which declared breadfruit one of three "superfoods" for being "high in protein, low in fat, gluten-free, loaded with omega-3s, bursting with antioxidants and overflowing with folate, fiber and phytonutrients."

The breadfruit is also a source of dietary fiber, potassium, calcium and magnesium with small amounts of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and iron.

"It is a wonderful crop that has sustained Pacific Islanders for thousands of years," said Diane Ragone, director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden’s Breadfruit Institute.

With a starchy texture and fragrance reminiscent of fresh baked bread, breadfruit has been an important staple crop in the Pacific for more than 3,000 years. The species originated in the South Pacific and was spread throughout Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. A few varieties from Polynesia were introduced to the Caribbean in the late 1700s, thanks to Capt. William Bligh and others, and they gradually found their way to other tropical areas. Breadfruit is now grown in nearly 90 countries.

While breadfruit also was a staple for Native Hawaiians, its use and popularity declined by the 20th century with a shift toward cheap, imported starches, increasing urbanization and changing lifestyles. Many of Hawaii’s large breadfruit groves disappeared, leaving only isolated trees and small groves found here and there.

Today, the Breadfruit Institute manages the largest and most extensive breadfruit collection in the world at National Tropical Botanical Garden outposts on Kauai and Maui.

The mission of the institute is to promote the conservation and use of breadfruit for food and reforestation. It’s also engaged in a global hunger initiative for food security, distributing breadfruit varieties around the world.

Ragone, a UH adjunct professor who has studied breadfruit for three decades, first tasted the fruit in Hawaii in 1979. But it was picked too green, she said, and lacked flavor. Six years later in Samoa, she tried it again. This time the fruit was taken from the tree when it was mature, soft and sweet.

"I loved it," she recalled. "It’s been a staple in my diet ever since."

Ragone, whose institute has been promoting breadfruit across Hawaii for years, said a lot of people tell her they don’t like the taste. "A lot of them tell me they’ve never eaten it, and they just don’t like it. They say it’s bland, with no flavor, and it’s hard to cook, with a sticky sap."

Indeed, the same Time magazine piece that called breadfruit a superfood also described it as an "ugly, tasteless fruit."

Ragone said the perception is simply not true and certainly not as long as you pick the fruit when it’s mature. She said it’s a matter of educating people about the proper ways of preparing the food.

The Breadfruit Institute website lists a surprising variety of recipes, including dishes such as breadfruit spinach dip, breadfruit and Spam wonton, breadfruit vegetable poke salad and breadfruit chips with avocado-pineapple salsa.

UH’s Avegalio said in 2011 a colleague pointed out that the gluten-free market was exploding and asked him if he knew of any potential gluten-free products in the Pacific region. He said he wasn’t even aware of the term "gluten-free." Soon thereafter, he met Ragone and asked her the same question. She replied, "Breadfruit."

"It was like a light bulb going on," he said.

The campaign to elevate the breadfruit into a winning economic enterprise took off from there and has grown with the help of Ragone, whose research over the years has helped to affirm the many uses of the breadfruit tree and the ulu fruit.

A descendent of Samoan chiefs, Avegalio found enthusiasm for the idea across the Pacific and beyond. The initiative’s inaugural Breadfruit Summit in 2012 in Pago Pago, American Samoa, was supported by the Ulupono Initiative, the Honolulu-based social impact investment firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Fiji-based agriculture consulting firm Koko Siga Pacific, the University of the South Pacific and the U.S. Embassy in Fiji are collaborating on a Melanesian Breadfruit Summit in early 2015, while a Pacific Regional Breadfruit Conference is being planned for October 2015 in Hawaii.

Avegalio said the first major Hawaii project proposal — creating flour made from breadfruit — will get a boost when a bread mix is tested for the market next year. The mix is being created in a collaboration with milling scientists at Kansas State University.

Although breadfruit has been successfully dehydrated and processed into flour in Samoa, the Philippines and Tahiti, the major distributors of gluten-free products in the U.S. know almost nothing about breadfruit and its potential, Avegalio said.

He envisions Hawaii as the major processing, refinement and export hub to the U.S. market for flour and other gluten-free food products made from breadfruit. He said global food distributor C.H. Robinson moves at least 300 tons of regular flour a week.

"No one island group can supply that demand," Avegalio said. "Only a collaborative regional approach can expect to do so."

Additional lucrative breadfruit projects, according to the initiative, are tantalizingly close to being ripe for the picking:

» Latex. The sap of the ulu is 100 percent latex that, when processed, commands more than $1,000 a gallon on the commodities market. Organic latex and plastic are not only high-demand commodities in the medical and health fields, but are also biodegradable with the potential of replacing nonbiodegradable plastics used in food packaging and shopping bags that plague the oceans and land environments worldwide.

"In Southeast Asia demand for organic latex far outstrips the supply," Avegalio said. "The problem is no one has heard about breadfruit latex."

Ohio State University, he said, received a $3 million grant to research latex from dandelions. But Avegalio said the quantity of latex produced by one breadfruit tree is the equivalent of that drawn from 10 square acres of dandelions.

» Insect repellant. The breadfruit flower, which drops and dries on the ground by the hundreds during fruiting, has been used by Pacific Islanders as a means to repel insects, and now testing and research have confirmed that the flower contains compounds more potent than DEET, the most common active ingredient in mosquito and insect repellents. Demand for such an organic repellant would be driven by the military, medical, disease control, post-disaster response and health organizations.

Research is continuing on these technologies, Avegalio said, but so far so good.

He said he’s fearful some other country or location will move to establish a breadfruit industry before Hawaii gets the chance.

A bill that would have provided an undetermined amount of funding for breadfruit research, development and marketing didn’t make it out of the state Legislature last year.

Breadfruit has the potential to become a major crop and a major job creator in Hawaii, James Nakatani, executive director of the state’s Agribusiness Development Corp., told lawmakers last year.

Maria Gallo, director of the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, and Scott Enright, chairman of the state Board of Agriculture, offered similar endorsements.

"I do believe this is huge — natural, sustainable, healthy and wonderful for man and earth," Avegalio said. "We’ve a window of opportunity that would be a shame not to engage aggressively."

GOOD EATING

According to the Breadfruit Institute, mature fruit has the best flavor and texture for most dishes where a potato-like consistency is desired. It tastes good plain or with a sauce or for making breadfruit salad, stew, curry, fries and lots of other dishes.

>> A mature breadfruit will ripen and become soft in one to three days at room temperature. Ripening can be delayed by putting it in the refrigerator for a few days or freezer for later use. The skin will turn brown but the edible flesh will stay firm.

>> Immature breadfruit is bright green and is rubbery and watery when cooked. It will not ripen after picking.

>> Breadfruit contains a small amount of white sap, which can stick to knives, pots and steamers. Cutting off the stem immediately after harvest and letting the fruit sit stem-end down will drain most of the sap. 

For more information, go to ntbg.org/breadfruit/