Sustainable Agriculture

CTAHR releases Taro Background Paper

The College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources has released a March, 2009 working paper entitled "Taro and CTAHR."  Available on-line, it covers the role of CTAHR in support of Hawaii's taro growers  Quoting from the overview:

Over the past century, personnel associated with the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) and its predecessor institutions have done many types of research with taro (Colocasia esculenta). Efforts have included work on

• disease avoidance through good agricultural practices
• yield improvement through better soil and plant nutrient management
• control of pests including weeds, insects, nematodes, and plant disease pathogens
• mechanization of planting, harvesting, and processing
• postharvest handling practices
• food product processing methods
• genetic studies and breeding to develop new varieties.

Publications resulting from these many and diverse efforts are listed in a bibliography at the end of this report. Most of this work has been welcomed and accepted by those engaged in taro growing, processing, and marketing in Hawai‘i. In recent years, however, there has been discomfit in some sectors of the populace about some aspects of the last research area listed, genetic studies and breeding.

Work on the taro genome in Hawai‘i has not always been a target of criticism. The collection, characterization, and preservation of the taros introduced by early colonizers, over the centuries when humans first populated the Hawaiian archipelago, before the arrival of Europeans, has been a goal of the college’s agricultural scientists for the past century. A concerted program on this in the 1930s by L.D. Whitney and colleagues became a foundation for subsequent efforts. Since the early 1970s, college scientists including Jill Wilson, Ramon de la Peña, Vincent Lebot, Eduardo Trujillo, John Cho, Susan Miyasaka, and Xiaoling He have studied taro genetics and the taro breeding system.

Three general areas of concern for recent critics of CTAHR taro work are (1) the introductions of Colocasia genetic materials from elsewhere, and their use in breeding, (2) patenting of plants developed through breeding, and (3) genetic engineering.

The paper also includes an extensive bibliography to scientific and extension publications about CTAHR's efforts working with taro growers to help improve upon the cultural practices of taro.  The working paper is published by the CTAHR Office of Communication Services and will be available from their office or on-line..