In 1793, Capt. William Bligh docked the HMS Providence in Kingstown in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a small island nation in the Caribbean Sea, with cargo filled with several hundred sapling breadfruit trees. His goal was singular: To introduce the long-lived trees with their carbohydrate-rich fruits to cheaply feed Britain’s slaves, who labored on the islands’ sugar plantations.
Now, 230 years later, a plant biology team led by Northwestern University, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the St. Vincent Botanical Gardens has, for the first time, traced five major lineages of Caribbean breadfruit back to that single introduction from Bligh’s voyage.
