{"id":24031,"date":"2014-04-16T09:39:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T19:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=24031"},"modified":"2021-11-02T10:40:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T20:40:54","slug":"app-to-track-papaya-ringspot-virus-created","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2014\/04\/16\/app-to-track-papaya-ringspot-virus-created\/","title":{"rendered":"App to track papaya ringspot virus created"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Scot Nelson shows the Pic-a-Papaya app, left, and Richard Manshardt under a papaya tree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scot Nelson<\/strong> and Richard Manshardt<\/strong>, scientists with the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources<\/a> (CTAHR<\/abbr>), have created a new citizen science app for iOS<\/abbr> and Android users that tracks what they believe to be the declining incidence of papaya ringspot virus (PRSV<\/abbr>) in the Honolulu area, as well as a possible increase in the incidence of PRSV<\/abbr>-resistant genetically engineered papayas.<\/p>\n

As the scientists point out, the disease used to be common, from its appearance in the 1940s through the early 2000s. Its rapid spread devastated the papaya industry on Oʻahu<\/span> in the 1960s and struck Big Island growers with 50 percent losses in the 1990s. Now, however, PRSV<\/abbr> appears to be relatively rare. This may be due to the fact that the Rainbow papaya, genetically engineered by CTAHR<\/abbr>, Cornell and USDA<\/abbr> researchers to be resistant to the virus, was introduced in 1998 after extensive testing and has been grown commercially for 15 years. By 2002, approximately half of the commercial papaya crop in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> was Rainbow, a development that has been credited with saving the papaya industry in the Islands. In 2009, about 77 percent consisted of Rainbow or the related genetically engineered SunUp, also released by CTAHR<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n

But Nelson, a specialist in the Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences<\/a>, and Manshardt, a horticulturalist in the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences<\/a>, are interested to learn how many papaya plants growing in home gardens or public areas are genetically engineered and of those that are not, how many are still harboring the virus. They hope their new Pic-a-Papaya project will help them gather this information.<\/p>\n

Users can go to the Pic-a-Papaya website<\/a> and download the free app, which will allow them to take pictures of papaya plants in the Honolulu metropolitan area—Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Kai to Kapolei—and send them to Nelson and Manshardt for diagnosis of PRSV<\/abbr>. Each plant will be assessed a value of “healthy” or “diseased” and its GPS<\/abbr> coordinates mapped. Users of the app can then view the map to see the distribution of infected plants.<\/p>\n

Download the Pic-a-Papaya app<\/strong><\/p>\n