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Photo credit: Jim Wiseman
The National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) has announced that Dr. Diane Ragone, founder and director emerita of NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute, will receive the 2024 David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration. Awarded by NTBG since 1999, the Fairchild Medal recognizes exceptional botanists, horticulturists, and explorers for their contributions.
Internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work in the collection, study, conservation, and advocacy of breadfruit, Ragone has dedicated her career to increasing the understanding, conservation, and use of breadfruit, a tropical fruit bearing tree in the Moraceae (fig family) which includes Artocarpus altilis and two related species.
Over four decades, Ragone conducted fieldwork and research on islands and atolls including Kiribati, Fiji, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Yap, Palau, Tokelau, the Marquesas Islands, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Cook Islands, Hawaiian Islands, and beyond —51 Pacific Islands in total. Ragone’s work has focused on documenting, collecting, and helping preserve the biocultural knowledge and provenance related to more than 600 individual breadfruit trees based on hundreds of interviews with local communities, farmers, horticulturists, cultural practitioners, scientists, and others.
After graduating with a B.S. in Horticulture (Virginia Tech, 1977) and an M.S. in Horticulture (1984) from the University of Hawai‘i, Ragone earned a Ph.D. in Horticulture (1991) from UH based on her dissertation “Collection, Establishment, and Evaluation of a Breadfruit Germplasm Collection.”
Following Ragone’s first Pacific field collecting trip to Samoa in 1985 and extensive fieldwork in 1987, she joined NTBG in 1989 as program director for the Hawai‘i Plant Conservation Center before going on to serve as manager of Kahanu Garden, chair of the plant science department, director of science, horticulture, and conservation. She also served as NTBG’s acting director along with other postings.
In 2003, Ragone established the Breadfruit Institute as an NTBG program which she led as its director until 2022 when she became director emerita.
Based on plant material hand-collected by Ragone and colleagues throughout the Pacific, the Breadfruit Institute has developed and curated a living conservation collection of 150 varieties — more than 300 individual trees — representing the wealth of genetic and horticultural diversity of breadfruit. NTBG now maintains the world’s largest repository of breadfruit cultivars. For more than two decades, the institute’s work has contributed significantly to the understanding, conservation, and use of breadfruit in Hawai‘i, across the Pacific, in the Caribbean, Central America, Africa, and other parts of the world.
Under Ragone’s direction, the Breadfruit Institute has grown into a global initiative that has collected, curated, and now manages the conservation collection at Kahanu Garden on Maui and a Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforest demonstration in McBryde Garden on Kaua‘i. Among its many endeavors, the Breadfruit Institute has become a center for collecting, preserving, and growing breadfruit germplasm, conducting extensive research and publishing studies, reports, and guides related to micropropagation, ethnobotany, community forests, agroforestry, climate resilience, food security, as well as the nutritional attributes and seasonality of breadfruit.
A major focus of Ragone’s research has been the identification and study of specific varieties (cultivars) of breadfruit which have proven to be exceptional in terms of nutritional composition, timing of fruit production, preferred qualities (flavor, texture, size, etc.), and resilience to environmental conditions such as drought and sea level rise. Ragone and her partners have identified varieties that include Ma‘afala, Ulu fiti, Otea, and two others that are well suited for micropropagation and global distribution.
Since its founding, the Breadfruit Institute has initiated dozens of national and international partnerships for research and the distribution of trees including collaborations with the Trees That Feed Foundation, Jungle Project, Patagonia Provisions, Ceres Trust, and universities in Hawai‘i, British Columbia, Copenhagen, Chicago, and elsewhere. Through these and other partnerships, the Breadfruit Institute has helped distribute nearly 200,000 trees to over 50 countries and territories around the world.
Ragone has been recognized by the Society for Economic Botany, the Garden Club of America, the World’s Who’s Who of Women, and the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at the University of Hawai‘i. As the 23rd recipient of the Fairchild Medal, she was selected by a five-person panel of peers including retired director of horticulture, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Dr. David Rae who said, “Dr. Ragone epitomizes the spirit and ethos of the Fairchild Medal because of her outstanding fieldwork and commitment in securing breadfruit germplasm.”
Upon learning that she had been selected to receive the Fairchild Medal, Ragone said, “I’m excited and delighted. It’s a really special award — I am overwhelmed to receive it.”
Past recipients of the Fairchild Medal have included plant scientists, scholars, and other experts in botany and horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, and other leading institutions.
The Fairchild Medal will be presented to Dr. Ragone at The Kampong, NTBG’s garden in Miami, Florida on November 14 where she will speak before an invited audience. She will deliver a second public lecture at The Kampong on November 15. Contact 1-305-442-7169 for details.
