Big Island scientist
earns national awardHe is honored for work he did
to protect papayas from a virus
Dennis Gonsalves, director of the U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center in Hilo, will receive the American Society of Plant Biologists' top award at its annual meeting here tonight.
About 1,700 plant scientists from around the world are attending the meetings, which began yesterday and continue through Wednesday at the Hawai'i Convention Center.
The society's 2003 Leadership in Science Public Service Award will be presented to Gonsalves at 6 p.m. in Room 317 in recognition of "outstanding contributions to science and humanity."
He is being honored for research he and his colleagues did to protect papayas from attack by ringspot virus.
The Big Island scientists received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Agriculture last year for their work in developing disease-resistant papaya varieties.
They combined modern biotechnology with conventional plant breeding to produce the new varieties. Seeds were available to growers in 1998, and crops have shown "excellent resistance" to the virus that threatened to devastate Hawaii's papaya production, the society said.
Hawaii's farmers, who produce nearly the entire U.S. papaya crop, harvested 55 million pounds in 2001 with a farm-gate value of more than $14 million.
Gonsalves was born and raised on a sugar plantation in Kohala and graduated from Kamehameha School in 1961. He attended the University of Hawaii, earning a bachelor's degree in horticulture in 1965 and a master's degree in plant pathology in 1968.
He earned a doctorate degree in plant pathology in 1972 from the University of California at Davis and worked on viruses that affect citruses at the University of Florida, where he became an associate professor.
He joined Cornell University at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., working there from 1977 to May 2002. He became full professor in 1986 and was appointed to an endowed Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor position in 1995.
He joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in May last year and went to Hilo as director of the USDA research center.
About 6,000 scientists in the United States and 50 other nations belong to the American Society of Plant Biologists, a nonprofit science organization with headquarters in Rockville, Md.
The meetings here are being held with the Japanese, Australia and Canadian societies of plant physiologists and plant-related societies in Pacific Rim countries.
Special symposiums and workshops are planned, as well as meetings to discuss new developments in plant research and production.
