{"id":107536,"date":"2019-12-09T15:53:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T01:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=107536"},"modified":"2019-12-09T15:53:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T01:53:05","slug":"ctahr-helps-kauai-taro-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2019\/12\/09\/ctahr-helps-kauai-taro-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"<abbr title=\"College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources\">CTAHR<\/abbr> assists in reviving Kaua\u2018i\u2019s taro industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_107535\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-107535\" style=\"width: 676px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/manoa-ctahr-kauai-taro.jpg\" alt=\"Russell Messing with taro\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-107535\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/manoa-ctahr-kauai-taro.jpg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/manoa-ctahr-kauai-taro-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/manoa-ctahr-kauai-taro-130x73.jpg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-107535\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Recently retired researcher Russell Messing, who ran the <abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr> <span aria-label=\"Kauai\">Kaua&#699;i<\/span> county operations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Alongside <span aria-label=\"Kauai\">Kaua&#699;i<\/span>\u2019s Agricultural Research Station, the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> at M\u0101noa\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu\/\">College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources<\/a> (<abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr>) helps to preserve and cultivate taro for the people of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The island\u2019s taro industry was hit hard by the floods of April 2018, which caused extensive damage to the taro-growing region of Hanalei.<\/p>\n<p><abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr> assisted in the renewal of the taro farms, from performing water and soil testing for contaminants to lending strong backs for cleanup. With <abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr>\u2019s help in distributing taro varieties for regrowth, <span aria-label=\"Kauai\">Kaua&#699;i<\/span>\u2019s taro industry is stabilizing.<\/p>\n<p><abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr>\u2019s involvement goes back to the 1990s when taro varieties faced the threat of birds, pigs, invasive snails and taro leaf blight (<abbr>TLB<\/abbr>), an infectious plant disease. To alleviate these problems, <abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr> plant pathologist <strong>John Cho<\/strong> partnered with county officials and taro farmers to breed a better taro.<\/p>\n<p>The collaboration led to a variety called Leihua <span aria-label=\"Hoohua\">Ho&#699;ohua<\/span>, which is tolerant to <abbr>TLB<\/abbr> and resistant to harmful native animals, as well as two other varieties that are suitable for growing in Puerto Rico. <abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr> distributed <em>Leihua <span aria-label=\"Hoohua\">Ho&#699;ohua<\/span><\/em> free to growers, saved the industry, individuals\u2019 livelihoods and the tradition of taro growing in Hanalei.<\/p>\n<p>Today, 80 percent of the taro grown there is Leihua <span aria-label=\"Hoohua\">Ho&#699;ohua<\/span>, and it\u2019s being replanted now, in the next revitalization of the valley and the industry.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gms.ctahr.hawaii.edu\/gs\/handler\/getmedia.ashx?moid=66356&#038;dt=3&#038;g=5\">Read the full story and more about <abbr>CTAHR<\/abbr>\u2019s collaborations statewide in their quarterly impact report. (<small><abbr title=\"portable document format\">PDF<\/abbr><\/small>)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><abbr title=\"东精影业\">东精影业<\/abbr> M\u0101noa\u2019s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources helps preserve and cultivate the varieties of taro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[222,212,9],"class_list":["post-107536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-agriculture","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107536"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107577,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107536\/revisions\/107577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}