Seed Industry flourishing

State's top crop forecast to reach up to $250 million in annual spending

 The seed industry is now Hawai'i's top crop in terms of production value.

Syngenta

Five seed companies — BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Syngenta— operate 10 farms on O'ahu, Maui, Moloka'i and Kaua'i.

Monsanto

Central America may be the original birthplace of corn, but Hawai'i for many years has been involved in the gestation of just about every corn plant grown from seed cultivated by the world's largest commercial seed producers.

If it's in the supermarket, fed to livestock or used to make fuel or other industrial products such as plastics and fiber, chances are the corn is from seeds at least partly developed in Hawai'i.

Corn seed companies have had a presence in Hawai'i for more than 40 years, initially as a home for winter nurseries. But advances in breeding work to give hybrid plants desirable traits helped grow the industry from $1 million in annual spending in the early 1970s to $10 million in the early 1990s.

In the past decade, industry growth has soared from about $30 million to $177 million last year as molecular breeding technology has became cheaper and faster, and more companies have set up or dramatically expanded local operations.

James Brewbaker, a professor of plant breeding and genetics at the University of Hawai'i, predicts that the state's seed crop industry could level off at $200 million to $250 million in annual spending — roughly the annual average value of sugar cane production in the 1980s before its precipitous decline.

"There is still a lot of growth that needs to happen," said Jonathan Bryant, managing director of plant science for BASF Corp., which is one of five global seed companies operating in the state.

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