FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Ingelia White looks at orchids growing in her new biotechnology lab at the science building of Windward Community College.
A new laboratory to help prepare students for plant biotechnology careers has opened at Windward Community College. New Windward
plant lab opensWCC students will be able to perform
DNA sequencing and biotechnology studiesBy Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.comThe $40,000 Tissue Culture and Plant Biotechnology Laboratory is the latest in a series of developments enhancing science education on the campus.
Students will use the new lab to propagate native plants, implant genes from one plant to another, perform DNA sequencing, clone plants and conduct other tissue culture experiments.
Ingelia White, internationally known orchid researcher, coordinates the Plant Biotechnology program, which started last summer at Windward Community College.
The botany and microbiology professor said she began working on tissue culture in an old lab on campus 18 years ago after buying a small sterile box to grow plant cells. Another one was donated by the Windward Orchid Society, and she acquired a shaker machine to shake plant tissue to stimulate growth.
She began an orchid culture class (still being offered) and began applying for grants to purchase better equipment when the biotechnology classes moved into the new science building in 1997.
A two-year $350,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in September 2001 funded the new tissue culture lab and enabled White to develop an "academic subject certificate in bio-resources and technology."
It is the first certificate of its type in University of Hawaii community colleges, and courses are transferable to the Manoa campus.
White's laboratories are equipped now with six sterile cases to culture plant tissue, and she is still buying instruments for the expanding program.
She started a new course in phytobiotechnology last summer and plans another new one in the fall on cell and molecular biology.
A tropical plant and orchid identification facility, Kuhi La'au, is used both for student practice and community service. In four years, White and her students have identified 643 plants taken there by residents.
One student just received an academic subject certificate and has entered a master's degree program at Manoa.
"Now that we have graduates in biotechnology," she said, "I would like to have them employed by biotechnology companies."
White said orchids have been her passion since she was in the sixth grade in Indonesia. Her uncle had an orchid greenhouse with the best collection in Jakarta, she said.
"I learned every orchid, and every time I see a new species, I have that thrill."
She went to the Bogar Agriculture Institute for bachelor's and master's degrees, worked in the Horticulture Research Institute in Jakarta for three years, then received an East-West Center grant. She earned a doctorate in tissue culture at UH.
She joined Windward Community College in 1983 as a lecturer, holding that title for 16 1/2 years while teaching botany and microbiology courses. In 1999 she was hired as a full-time instructor.
She writes for many orchid and plant journals and takes students every summer to Southeast Asia for field study. Last summer, they went to Cambodia.
