Issue 52   |   August 12, 2016   |   Archive   |   Subscribe

Grants & Awards

Honor in Horticulture

Kent Kobayashi (TPSS) was honored along with other newly elected Fellows at the Awards Ceremony at the 113th Annual Conference of the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) in Atlanta, Georgia. Kent was selected as a fellow for his research on the use of microcomputers in horticulture, lights and plant growth, and Extension information systems, and for his significant role in ASHS committees. Six previous CTAHR faculty have also been selected as fellows, the highest honor that ASHS can bestow on its members. Congratulations!

Everything’s Coming Up Poinsettias...

TPSS graduate student Emily Teng is the proud recipient of the John Carew Memorial Scholarship, a scholarship open to graduate students in horticulture with an interest in greenhouse crops. Emily’s research project is aimed at analyzing how anthocyanin qualities in poinsettia bracts respond to changes in temperature, light intensity, and plant growth regulator use. After receiving her doctorate, Emily would like to work in floriculture production and variety improvement research. She hopes to work in a university as an educator, but no matter what position she has, she wants her work to connect scientific research with practical industry applications. Great job, Emily!

Spotlight on Our Community

Affordable Excellence

Thanks to UH Manoa, Hawai'i came in at 5th place among all the states in providing affordable access to a public research university education. The affordability report was released by the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The community colleges ranked even higher, being found to be the most affordable two-year public institutions of higher education in the US. The upshot: UH? A great deal. Any institution that CTAHR is a part of? Priceless!

This Little Piggy’s Going To Market…

Extension agent Michael DuPonte has been instrumental in helping local swine producers sustainably continue pork production in the Islands. He helped to introduce and educate producers about the Inoculated Deep Litter System, an EPA-approved waste management practice using locally collected micro-organisms, deep litter made of green waste, and a housing design using natural ventilation and solar drying. Recently he moderated a very successful Agricultural Cooperative workshop for swine producers put on by the CES and collaborators. The Kohala Center’s Teresa Young discussed the opportunities and structure of a co-op, and Hanna Bree introduced a low-interest loan program for local producers, while Mike Amado, the president of the Hawaii Island Meat Co-op, highlighted the services that a mobile slaughterhouse could provide for hogs. Sixty producers gathered to discuss bottlenecks in market, feed prices, available equipment, regulations, and harvesting. Results of the discussion identified these group objectives: 1) meet market demands by farmers’ consolidation of animals 2) merge feed orders for volume pricing and shipping discounts, and 3) incorporate use of the mobile slaughter service to meet current and initiate new pork markets. The producers unanimously voted to organize and pursue the formation of the Big Island Swine Cooperative. We can hope all this means more delicious local pork in the markets!

Tropical Connections

Rebecca Cole (NREM), currently a junior researcher working at Komohana in Creighton Litton’s lab, has been selected for a prestigious position with the Organization of Tropical Studies (OTS). Starting in October, she will be the director of the Las Cruces Research Station and Wilson Botanical Garden in Costa Rica, close to where she grew up. Dr. Elizabeth Losos, the president and CEO of OTS, called Rebecca “an outstanding scientist and educator.” Rebecca earned her Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz, and at CTAHR she has established a long-term project to monitor recovery of threatened ecosystems and test ways to restore native plant communities in Hawai‘i. She also co-founded a non-profit organization, the American Climber Science Program (ACSP), to conduct volunteer research and conservation in remote and mountainous regions throughout the world. Rebecca intends to continue her research on restoration ecology, ecosystem ecology, and global change biology in the tropics, both in Costa Rica and in Hawai‘i; she will retain a 20% appointment with UH and will facilitate research and educational collaborations between UHM and OTS.

PEPS Plus!

PEPS recently held a gathering to celebrate retirements and other career and service milestones of faculty and staff in the department. Retirees Julian Yates and Arnold Hara (pictured) were recognized; another recent retiree, Anne Alvarez, was also recognized, though she was not present. Julia Coughlin and Gareth Nagai were recognized for their significant years of service. Koon-Hui Wang was honored for her promotion and tenure, and Mark Wright was thanked for his three years of service as department chair. Check out more photos of the happy event on Flickr!

In the Warm Heart of Africa

CTAHR alumna Linda Burnham Larish, who received her MS in Horticulture from the college in 1990 and who has worked as a researcher with faculty in the college, traveled to Malawi in June as a volunteer of the USAID-supported Farmer-to-Farmer program with Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA). Linda spent three weeks in Malawi teaching forty-one members of the Ngolowindo Cooperative how to improve their technical knowledge of growing tomatoes. The cooperative works in the Salima area growing crops with furrow irrigation at this time of year, which is the dry season. This was Linda’s sixth assignment with the FtF Program. She has worked as a volunteer with both Winrock and CNFA in Southern Africa and Bangladesh. Her first visit to Malawi as a FtF volunteer was in 2010, when she taught Integrated Pest Management to the Lobi Horticultural Association. During her most recent two-week tenure, Linda focused on tomato cultivation and pest and disease management in tomato. It’s expected that as a result of her work, the quality and production of the Cooperative’s tomato crop will improve. Here Linda is pictured with Ngolowindo Cooperative members, who are holding up their certificates of course completion outside of the Cooperative’s meeting and storage building. Find out more information about the Farmer-to-Farmer program or volunteer opportunities here!

Milestones in Service: Ken Leonhardt and Lynn Bessara

Two members of the CTAHR ‘ohana have reached an exceptional landmark event in their work with CTAHR—Lynn Bessara and Ken Leonhardt have both completed 40 years of service! Lynn, office assistant extraordinaire, keeps everything running smoothly at the Wahiawa Extension Office, and Ken, a specialist in horticulture as well as an alumnus of the college for both his MS and PhD, focuses on developing improved varieties of ornamental plants for commercial producers, particularly varieties of trees and flowers that are bred not to produce seedpods that can be messy and increase upkeep. CTAHR is the better for both!

New Faces: Maile Sing

Maile Sing has joined the Academic and Student Affairs Office, and in particular Kalai Castro and Irene Morrow, as CTAHR’s newest academic advisor. Maile is originally from San Jose, California; she received two bachelor’s degrees, in Psychology and Women’s Studies, from UC Santa Cruz. She has worked in admissions at several institutions of higher education, including Palmer College of Chiropractic West, San Jose State University, and UH Hilo. She comes to the college from UH West O‘ahu, where she served as the articulation specialist. She’s currently working towards her Masters of Education degree in Educational Administration, with a focus in higher education. Welcome, Maile!

Nematodes Rock!...

So proclaimed the T-shirt grad student Philip Waisen (second from right) wore to the joint conference between the Society of Nematologists (SON) and Organization of Nematologists of Tropical America (ONTA), which was held in Montreal, Canada, from July 18 to 22. Other nematologists from and affiliated with PEPS also attended the event, presenting nine papers or posters related to plant-parasitic nematodes or entomopathogenic nematodes in Hawai‘i. Other graduate students participating were Kevin Chan, Shova Mishra, Josiah Marques, Justin Bisel, and Teri Lau, along with their advisors Zhiqiang Cheng, Roxana Myers, Brent Sipes, and Koon-Hui Wang. Philip was awarded Bayer Student Travel Award from SON and the Mary Olmsted Endowed Fellowship from UH Foundation, while Shova was awarded Graduate Student Travel award from the UH GSO to attend the meeting. PEPS nematologists will also be greeting three graduate students visiting from the University of Florida on Aug 9 for academic information exchange—and more rocking nematodes!

Food Security Grows on Trees

Diane Ragone, 2015 Outstanding Alumna and the director of the National Breadfruit Institute on Kaua’i, is lauded in a recent article in the high-end food magazine Saveur, which describes her as “the closest thing the world has to a breadfruit celebrity.” The article explains that in an effort to combat world hunger, Diane has teamed with a horticultural company to send 60,000 breadfruit trees to more than 30 countries and distributed thousands of breadfruit plants throughout Hawai‘i.

From Albania, With Love

Matthew Loke (NREM and HDOA) and other CTAHR faculty hosted a group of Cochran Fellows from Albania to learn about high-value fruit and vegetable marketing. Cochran fellows come to the United States, generally for 2–3 weeks, to work with U.S. universities, government agencies, and private companies. They receive hands-on training to enhance their technical knowledge and skills in areas related to agricultural trade, agribusiness development, management, policy and marketing. The Fellows came to Hawai‘i to improve Albania’s trade capacity by adopting international standards and becoming better acquainted with US marketing systems and to enhance food security, US agricultural exports, and trade ties with Albania. The CTAHR team served to facilitate a robust on-site training and free exchange of information between prominent local industry players and the Cochran Fellows, including the mini-conference on “Value-Added Strategies of Hawai’i Farmers and Chefs” held on Wednesday, July 27. USDA-FAS, USAID, and HDOA were other cooperators in this program.

New Publications

Help for Hepatitis A

Hepatitis A has been in the news lately, and the number of cases in Hawai‘i is rising. That’s why the new publication Hepatitis A by Aurora Saulo (TPSS) is so timely and important to read. It gives useful information about the disease, including the pathways of infection and common-sense ways to avoid getting it—most important, get vaccinated, and practice good personal hygiene, like washing your hands carefully. Check out the rest of the paper here!

Read It and Eat

This quarter’s Impact Report has now been posted on the CTAHR website. In keeping with the start of Rachel Novotny’s tenure as interim dean, this issue looks at food, food systems, and nutrition, her own research interests. Stories discuss ways to solve the problems of food waste, trials for a sustainable new crop in the Islands, making sure that farmers and producers keep the food we eat safe with Good Agricultural Practices, and the Hawai’i Foods website’s uniquely local slant on nutrition information. Gobble up the issue today!

Growing Minds

The Star-Advertiser carried a great article by junior Extension agent Kalani Matsumura enumerating the many benefits that come to students who work and learn in school gardens. These include a greater awareness of sustainability and the importance of healthy eating, information about botany and biology, inspiration for works of art and literature, and the feeling of energy and focus that comes from being outdoors instead of always stuck in a classroom. The article also quotes CTAHR alumnus Alberto Ricordi, now a landscape architect, who volunteers in a school garden in Waimanalo and says that he loves to see children’s sense of accomplishment and excitement when they help things to grow. Kalani’s focus at CTAHR is on urban horticulture. He will assist the O‘ahu Master Gardener Program and help to expand training and outreach opportunities.

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