Being a Sugarcane Breeder in Hawaii

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to become a sugarcane breeder when I graduated from a Midwestern university. But Judy was from northern Idaho, and really wanted to be close to mountains. Major agronomic crops and mountains are pretty much incompatible. I promised her I would look on the "open positions board," and tell her every job that was remotely close to mountains. I came home one evening and told her in a not very serious tone, "There is a job in Hawaii, and Hawaii has mountains." She said, "What about checking it out?" I said, "Judy, Hawaii is a place where you go on vacation, not a place where you work." To make a long story short, the more I looked into it, the more interesting the job sounded. Sugarcane was at that time, by far the most important crop in Hawaii. As it turned out, the next 16 years were the most idyllic of my life. As I look back, I can't believe how grossly I under-appreciated how nice the job was that I had in Hawaii. While she was on vacation in Hawaii, I took my older sister, Carolyn, to our breeding station in the Maunawili Valley on the windward side of Oahu, which is recognized as possibly the most free-flowering location on the planet for making sugarcane crosses.

When she finished her vacation, she told me that this location was her favorite, of all the places we took her. Having worked there for several years, I had reached the point of having taken it for granted. Being a sugarcane breeder has its challenges, not the least of which is to get different varieties to flower...and flower at the same time, so that genetic crosses can be made. But the development of just one new variety 10% higher yielding than the mainstay variety, was worth tens of millions of dollars to the industry annually, so the industry was getting a good return on its $6 million /year investment into research (1977 dollars), much of which was directed at the breeding program. Today, with only two sugar plantations remaining in Hawaii, much has changed. I left sugarcane research in 1990, installed turfgrass on new golf courses until 1993, then left Hawaii altogether with many fond memories.