By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Biochemist Stefan Moisyadi shows no-caffeine coffee
plants being grown at UH. They begin as leaf cuttings, left,
are transformed into plant cells called callus,
middle, then to seedlings, right-rear.
Genetically altered plants
By Peter Wagner
may produce caffeine-free beans
Star-BulletinThere's something alien about the little green plants, each rooted in a dish of transparent gel at the University of Hawaii's Department of Plant Molecular Physiology. Most plants come from seeds. These emerged from genetic mush.
The 2-inch fledglings, first of their kind, are coffee plants.
Made by human hands, they are programmed to produce caffeine-free beans.
"The exciting thing is the University of Hawaii has achieved something nobody else has achieved after many years of trying," said Bill Henderson, chief executive at the ForBio Group, an Australian company specializing in research and mass production of genetically altered plants.
"Many large research groups have been trying to do this genetic engineering and haven't been able to, so have given up," he said.
If it works, the plant will yield a "naturally" caffeine-free product that won't require costly decaffeination, Henderson said. And consumers can enjoy the full taste of coffee untouched by chemical treatments, he adds.
The decaffeination process, which costs about 50 cents a pound, is a turnoff to some customers and could account for a currently flagging market for "decaf," industry experts say. The procedure is thought to wash some of the flavor out of coffee.
The proof will be in the first cup, about five years away after tests, government approvals and the maturing of crops.
A big venture
The project, started six years ago with skimpy state and federal funding, is now underwritten by American Tropical Plants, a recent joint venture of Honolulu-based Integrated Coffee Technologies Inc. and ForBio.The venture hopes to double the market for caffeine-free coffee, now about 15 percent of the 2.4 billion pounds consumed in the United States each year.
But the Hawaii researchers have come up with far more than a new species of coffee. Using the same genetic map, they say, they can increase, lower or eliminate caffeine and other substances found in coffee, tea and cocoa.
"What we're talking about is completely controlling the level of caffeine in plants," said Henderson.
"The level of anti-oxidants can also be controlled. In a few years' time, you might see the composition of coffee changed into a superb health drink which is good for you."
The venture has licensing agreements with the University of Hawaii, which holds patents on the unique plants.
Second breakthrough
The same research has produced yet another patent for the UH, one for a genetically engineered coffee plant whose beans are expected to ripen uniformly.Normal coffee beans ripen unevenly, requiring labor-intensive hand-harvesting to avoid green beans. Uniform ripening would enable greater use of mechanical harvesting -- a boon to growers and producers.
"Being able to control the ripening process has enormous implications for the industry," said Ted Lingle, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
Research on the "transgenic" coffee plant began in 1993 as a joint effort between John Stiles, a molecular biologist at the university, and Chifumi Nagai, a biotechnologist at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, formerly the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association.
The two pursued the same goal from different angles: Stiles used a tissue culture called "agrobacterium," while Nagai tried a high-speed particle gun that shoots genetic material into plant cells. Both found success but continue to hone their research for the best result.
In a key discovery, the scientists identified the gene that produces caffeine in beans. By tinkering with the gene -- inserting it backward -- they were able to block production of caffeine.
The University of Hawaii's new genetically altered coffee plant is just the latest achievement by a precocious biotechnology industry in Hawaii. Biotechnology here
is poised for boomLast year the university unveiled a papaya resistant to ringspot virus, to help rescue a stricken industry.
And a striking new anthurium called Tropic Fire, another product of genetic research at UH, could boost flower exports.
"We're really poised for great advances in our ability to make food more nutritious, agriculture more efficient, more environmentally sensitive, by developing plants that are more disease-
resistant and so on," said Mike Harrington, interim director of the Hawaii Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at UH.
Tapping a growing worldwide market for pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements and other genetically tailored products from plants and marine organisms, Hawaii is drawing increased interest from major investors.
And with ideal growing conditions combined with high-tech capabilities, Hawaii officials hope to ride the advantage to a multibillion-dollar industry in coming years.
"We have huge comparative advantages when it comes to biotechnology, and this needs to be exploited," said Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
"Our whole state is a greenhouse, compared to temperate climates, for propagation of new varieties of plants."
Peter Wagner, Star-Bulletin Stefan Moisyadi, a key member of the university's team of biochemists, recalls years of tedious work before little blobs of "calli" -- undifferentiated cells coaxed from leaves -- showed signs of life.
"The original calli we produced kept on dying," he said. "We kept them in a medium they didn't like, and we were throwing them out. Then we found if we changed the medium they were in, little embryos came out."
Big step for Hawaii
Mike Harrington, interim director of the Hawaii Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at UH, sees the effort as a big step for biotechnology in Hawaii.He notes it comes on the heels of groundbreaking papaya research by UH horticulturist Richard Manshardt in collaboration with government and private industry scientists.
"It really puts the university on the biotechnology map," Harrington said.
"What we did with papaya was a first, but papaya is a relatively small industry. Coffee is a billion-dollar industry. We're talking orders of magnitude here in terms of economic importance."
American Tropical hopes to have hundreds of millions of trees planted around the world in the next five to 10 years.
The company plans to set up shop at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center in Aiea next month to begin mass production of the plant with the help of "Vitron," a tissue culture robot which can mass-produce more than 3 million plants per year.
Meanwhile, scientists at the university and the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center are relishing their breakthrough.
"To me it's a miracle of life," said Moisyadi. "It justifies evolution and how undifferentiated cells each contain the information for a whole plant."
A new harvest
Economists project the market for biotechnology at $170 billion worldwide. They say it could generate a $7 billion industry in Hawaii. Among large corporations already underwriting Hawaii research are Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont and Eli Lilly. A conference on the subject is planned next week:
What: "Agriculture and Marine Biotechnology in Hawaii"
