Location: Tropical Plant Genetic Resources and Disease Research
Project Number: 2040-21000-019-024-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2026
End Date: Oct 31, 2028
Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to develop genetic resources for tropical crops (such as coffee and cacao) with improved horticultural traits, disease resistance, and quality. Specific objectives are to: 1) Develop locally adapted, coffee leaf rust resistant varieties for release to growers in Hawaii. 2) Maintain and propagate coffee genetic resources to support long-term access to coffee germplasm. 3) Evaluate select cacao germplasm to identify improved cultivars for growers in Hawaii. 4) Develop tissue culture and plant regeneration protocols to enable precision breeding methods for tropical crops. 5) Develop genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, and phenotypic evaluation of important tropical crops.
Approach:
HARC imported coffee leaf rust (CLR) resistant varieties in the late 1990s and made F1 populations with Hawaii commercial varieties. HARC will continue to maintain these populations as a diverse population for ongoing CLR resistant breeding objectives. HARC will transfer select CLR resistant material to the ARS germplasm collection. Also, HARC will continue to develop a high throughput, on farm, CLR susceptibility assay to more quickly identify susceptible genotypes from breeding efforts. HARC will collaborate with ARS scientists to develop genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, and phenotypic evaluation of important tropical crops such as coffee, moringa, pineapple and turmeric. HARC tissue culture experts will continue method development aimed at enabling application of novel precision breeding technology to tropical crops. Finally, HARC will continue the long-term cacao clonal evaluation trial to determine locally adapted genotypes for Hawaii farmers.