Making Life Better in Maui County

Congratulations to all CTAHR faculty who were successful in the recent Maui County FY19 grant competition! The six top-ranked proposals out of thirteen applicants were funded. These projects included Kyle Caires’s “Advanced Reproductive Technologies Workshops for Livestock Producers and 4-H Youth,” which entails training livestock producers in Maui County to become proficient in advanced reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer; Cynthia Nazario-Leary and Chuck Chimera’s project to “Establish Ornamental Trial Garden at the Kahului Research, Education and Demonstration Center,” which would partner with the Hawaii-Pacific Weed Risk Assessment to create a trial garden in Maui to evaluate growth, pest/disease resistance, and invasive criteria of new and existing landscape plants in Hawai‘i; and James Leary and Roberto Rodriguez’s “Transforming Small Farm Operations with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS),” which investigates dispensing pesticides from UAS, offering state-of-the-art pest-management technology for agriculture and invasive species management. The other winners are Noa Lincoln, Alton Arakaki, and Pam Shingaki for “Breadfruit in Maui County”; Heather Greenwood-Junkermeier, Cynthia Nazario-Leary, Robin Shimabuku, Kylie Tavares, Hua Zan, Jenjira Yahirun, and Linda Cox for “Responding to the Business Planning Needs of Maui’s Agriculture-Related Business Owners and Operators”; and Jennifer Hawkins for “Field Demonstration on the Economic Feasibility of Utilizing Direct/Precision Seeding Methods in Vegetable Production on Moloka‘i.” All these projects will help to make life better for individuals and communities in Maui County and throughout the Islands!