Trinidad and Tobago is moving to get the jump on Barbados and other Caribbean islands with a major effort to explore the commercialisation of breadfruit.
The St Augustine Campus, University of the West Indies, is assembling a team of experts, who will meet there in July for the 2015 International Breadfruit Conference. The theme will be Commercialising Breadfruit For Food And Nutrition Security.
That’s according to information released last week by St Augustine’s Faculty of Food and Agriculture, which is hosting the conference.
The faculty said the event’s aim was to maximise “the potential of breadfruit to contribute to food and nutrition security through promoting entrepreneurial efforts and development of industries by providing an international forum for sharing information on entrepreneurial, research and development activities, support increased utilisation of breadfruit and breadnut for food nutrition and security”.
This was in addition to “providing a forum for entrepreneurs in the food and agriculture sector, including rural communities, to discuss the key issues affecting the commercial potential of breadfruit and breadnut, and creating opportunities for networking among public and private sectors, rural communities and research institutions for the future development of these crops for food and nutrition security”.
The conference will focus on historical perspectives/
agricultural policies, human nutrition and health germplasm collection, conservation, evaluation, distribution, propagation, production management, post-harvest technology, value-addition and utilisation, marketing and consumption, economics, supply chain and value-chain analyes.
The organisers hope to attract a wide range of participants, including policymakers, health professionals, researchers, growers/producers, food processors, traders, extension agents, entrepreneurs, community groups, consumers and tertiary level students.
