Long Live the Papaya

ASEE Prism, Apr 2006 by Grose, Thomas K

AGRICULTURE

LITTLE-KNOWN fact about Hawaii: It's the U.S. center for experimental biotechnology crops. Since 1988, regulators have green-lighted 10,600 applications to grow genetically engineered crops on 49,300 separate fields. Researchers like the year-round growing season; opponents think they also like the island's somewhat isolated position in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Not surprisingly, the state's a microcosm for the ongoing global debate over GM foods. A few years back, the entire Hawaiian papaya crop was under threat from a mysterious virus. A Cornell University researcher genetically spliced a tiny bit of the virus into papaya trees, essentially inoculating them against the virus. The vaccination worked; the state's $16 million papaya industry was saved. Not surprisingly, papaya growers are hig fans of biotcch. But growers of Kona coffee beans, a product so loved by Java mavens that it sells for $20 a pound, oppose plans to test GM coffee plants that will grow decaffeinated beans. Their fear: cross-pollination - should it occur -could render Kona beans less potent (and less marketable). Pineapple growers also are not interested in GM techniques. Antibiotech measures introduced in the state legislature have so far failed to gather enough support to pass. And Hawaii's papaya growers hope that situation doesn't change. -TG