After Hurricane Melissa’s exceptionally strong winds subsided, the roots of breadfruit trees clung deep into the fertile Jamaican soil — offering hope and a step toward food security in the future.

For the past 16 years, Mary and Mike McLaughlin, Jamaican natives who now live in Winnetka, have helped plant almost half a million fruit trees — mostly non-native breadfruit — across the Caribbean and Africa, about 250,000 of those in Jamaica alone. Despite its resilience, breadfruit has long been an underutilized source of food, Mary McLaughlin said.

The couple’s Trees That Feed Foundation aims to expand its use as a crop in locations vulnerable to extreme weather events that are intensifying because of human-made climate change. Several rapid scientific analyses found Hurricane Melissa was

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