Cultivation of jackfruit, bo trees, nuga trees and immunity-boosting medicinal herbs

Sivakumar Thenujan (11 years) plants a jackfruit tree in his garden in Kilinochchi on 19 May to commemorate peace

By Surya Vishwa

We live in a planet called Earth that we have ruined and now we are facing unexplainable and incurable diseases. 

We reiterate our constant call for everyone, especially for children and youth around Sri Lanka, to plant some variety of herb or tree beneficial to human health. We are a world dying of lack of oxygen. The air we breathe in this age of modernity is poisonous. Please plant trees such as the bo tree (the sacred Bodhi Tree) and trees such as nuga that will provide us with high amounts of needed oxygen to purify the air. 

To keep our sustenance going in challenging times and for the countless medicinal properties present in jackfruit, and the diversity it possesses in the creation of food items, please enable some suitable space in the premises of your office, home, school or place of worship and cultivate this incredibly useful but grossly under-estimated tree. 

We are a nation which had a history of self-sufficiency in food and we did not grow our food using chemicals. Chemical agriculture that destroys the ecosystem and ourselves is not part of our heritage. Let us revert to the simplicity of our ancestors. Let us educate ourselves on the curative properties of the plants and trees that grow on this soil. There are many plants that grow in this country which have extraordinary sets of uses as a food supplement and for preventing and curing illnesses ranging from cancer to diabetes. The jackfruit tree is one such gift to humanity. 

The tender leaves and bark are well-known for the treatment of diabetes as we have cited previously quoting Ayurveda Physician Palitha Shri Gagana Arachchige, author of Hela Weda Aththpotha. The powdered jackfruit seeds are known to be excellent substitute for flour from which a range of food products can be made, from desserts to cake, roti or even bread. Powdered jackfruit is also known to be an excellent nutritive facemask for youthful looks. 

At a time when we are struggling with the challenge of immunity which is the first casualty of COVID-19, our attention should be to strengthen our knowledge on how to fortify our system with the nutrients found in this land. Jackfruit as a fruit is both nutritious and chemical-free unlike most fruit in the market today. Last week we featured the cultivation of jackfruit trees in the north of the country as a commemoration of May as a month of peace.

Mother Nature is not discriminative of people based on their caste or creed or religion. The earth bears its produce equally for all of us. Let us therefore spearhead our own small steps in getting together and creating fruit seed collections (without throwing them away) so that we could plant them meaningfully in our own garden space, in any other location such as places of worship/schools or gift them to a friend. As we explained last week, fruits such as wood apple have many seeds and saving seeds from a mere handful of fruits can result in a small plantation. Let us create the trend of celebrating weddings, birthdays and anniversaries by gifting plants which we have nurtured and watched arise from a mere seed in the soil.

In these uncertain times it is only nature that will redeem us and bring us back to the curative that exists within mother earth which most of us seem to have forgotten, deluded into thinking that we could forever poison this earth with our science and our greed. Let us use this lockdown time to reflect on what we have done to ourselves through the vicious cycle of what we have done to mother earth and strive to rectify our attitude, knowledge and our actions. 

We offer our gratitude to the following persons who have gifted to Lankan soil many trees, manmade forests and herbal plants. We thank Eng. Sudath Rohitha who we are supporting in the campaign to cultivate jackfruit trees around the country in a systematic manner for the promoting of exports as well as the health of the Lankan population. We thank Ranjith Seneviratne for supporting us with his forest garden expertise and for all the work he is doing for promoting biodiversity agriculture amongst youth. 

We thank Eng. Harsha Kumar Suriyaarachchi for enabling us to have hundreds of jackfruit seeds from his plantation for cultivating around the country and for promoting the indigenous medical heritage of Sri Lanka in times of COVID-19. We thank Ayurveda Physician Palitha Shri Gagana Arachchige for the advice on the medicinal uses of jackfruit and for his efforts on cultivating indigenous vegetables/medicinal herbs in Sri Lanka. We thank Major General Ubaya Madawela for his advice on saving/conserving fruit seeds and on cultivating nuga and bo trees. We urge you the reader to recognise how interlinked we are as humans with this earth and return to that awareness with action by planting the needed trees and herbs in these difficult times.