Michael B Kantar

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | UH Manoa · Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences

Hawaii is known for its diverse micro-climates, making the evaluation of varieties at different locations an important strategy to determine the best varieties for each climate zone. Demand for dry beans in Hawaii has been rising due to the increase in production of value-added goods made from legumes. Initial field trials in 2017 were conducted to...

Cannabis sativa L. is an annual flowering herb of Eurasian origin that has long been associated with humans. Domesticated independently at multiple locations at different times for different purposes (food, fiber, and medicine), these long-standing human associations have influenced its distribution. However, changing environmental conditions and c...

Population structure of Cannabis sativa L. was explored across nine independent collections that each contained a unique sampling of varieties. Hierarchical Clustering of Principal Components (HCPC) identified a range of three to seven genetic clusters across datasets with inconsistent structure based on use type indicating the importance of sampli...

Introduction Sida fallax (Malvaceae) is the most widespread and variable taxon of Malvaceae in the Hawaiian Islands, growing with a diversity of morphological forms in different habitats including Midway Atoll, Nihoa, and all the main islands. Morphological variation exists within and among populations. The study aimed to investigate the genetic va...

Macadamia tetraphylla is a wild relative of the economically valuable crop Macadamia integrifolia. Genomic knowledge of crop wild relatives is central to determining their possible role in breeding programs to mitigate biotic and abiotic stress in the future. The goal of this project was to develop a genomic resource for macadamia agriculture in Ha...

Grown on 7 million ha, mungbean is a warm‐season grain legume with regional importance in parts of Asia and Africa. Under forecasted climate change, due to its tolerance to drought and heat, the short crop duration, and its nutritional properties, mungbean could serve to fill an important need for human diets. However, selection of accessions becom...

Crop populations have enormous impacts on agricultural productivity, yet decelerating gains from breeding suggest that selection strategies need to be reconsidered to better align priorities of breeders and growers. Breeders benefit from releasing broadly adapted varieties that perform acceptably well across their target region; growers benefit fro...

Domestication is an ongoing well-described process. However, while many have studied the changes domestication causes in plant genetics, few have explored its impact on the portion of the geographic landscape in which the plants exist. Therefore, the goal of this study was to understand how the process of domestication changed the geographic space...

Pineapple (Ananas comosus var. comosus) and ornamental bromeliads are commercially induced to flower by treatment with ethylene or its analogs. The apex is transformed from a vegetative to a floral meristem and shows morphological changes in 8 to 10 days, with flowers developing 8 to 10 weeks later. During eight sampling stages ranging from 6 h to...

Wildfires ravage lands in seasonally dry regions, imposing high costs on infrastructure maintenance and human habitation at the wildland–urban interface. Current fire mitigation approaches present upfront costs with uncertain long-term payoffs. We show that a new landscape intervention on human-managed wildlands—buffers of a low-flammability crop s...

Although communicating research is a key part of public science, current graduate curricula in the agricultural sciences usually have a narrow focus on communication appropriate for presenting to scientific and academic audiences, such as in the form of the dreaded “seminar.” Yet the importance and impact of agriculture extends well beyond research...

Extreme environmental variability requires the identification of genetic diversity that can help crops withstand difficult abiotic conditions. Understanding the genetic basis of adaptation to abiotic stress can provide tools for adapting agriculture to changing climates. Crop landraces and their wild ancestors from centers of domestication have oft...

An explosion of data available in the life sciences has shifted the discipline toward genomics and quantitative data science research. Institutions of higher learning have been addressing this shift by modifying undergraduate curriculums resulting in an increasing number of bioinformatics courses and research opportunities for undergraduates. The g...

The disciplines of evolutionary biology and plant and animal breeding have been intertwined throughout their development, with responses to artificial selection yielding insights into the action of natural selection and evolutionary biology providing statistical and conceptual guidance for modern breeding. Here we offer an evolutionary perspective...

Crop wild relatives host unique adaptation strategies that enable them to thrive across a wide range of habitats. As pressures from a changing climate mount, a more complete understanding of the genetic variation that underlies this adaptation could enable broader utilization of wild materials for crop improvement. Here, we carry out environmental...

Recently, there has been a substantial increase in high‐throughput technologies that generate highly complex large datasets for use in the sciences. Plant breeding and genetics have benefited from this data explosion where many public and private institutions now implement genomic and phenomic data to predict performance thus informing germplasm se...

Introduction: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic markers for cattle production and reproduction traits. Several publications have reported Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) for carcass-related traits in cattle, but these studies were rarely conducted in pasture-finished beef cattle. Hawai’i, however, has a diverse c...

Climate change is threatening the status quo of agricultural production globally. Perennial cropping systems could be a useful strategy to adapt agriculture to a changing climate. Current and future perennial row crop systems have many and varied applications and these systems can respond differently than annuals to agricultural challenges resultin...

Agriculture is a designed system with the largest areal footprint of any human activity. In some cases, the designs within agriculture emerged over thousands of years, such as the use of rows for the spatial organization of crops. In other cases, designs were deliberately chosen and implemented over decades, as during the Green Revolution. Currentl...

Background Peppers, bell and chile, are a culturally and economically important worldwide. Domesticated Capsicum spp. are distributed globally and represent a complex of valuable genetic resources. Objectives Explore population structure and diversity in a collection of 467 peppers representing eight species, spanning the spectrum from highly dome...

Soil remediation is the act of removing or reducing the availability of contaminants from soil. In the case of agriculture, soil remediation targets the removal of pollutants, including residual pesticides/herbicides, hydrocarbons, and toxic heavy metals. This is often done by chemical treatments with multiple washes or excavation of soils, which a...

Two species of rice have been independently domesticated from different ancestral wild species in Asia and Africa. Comparison of mutations that underlie phenotypic and physiological alterations associated with domestication traits in these species gives insights into the domestication history of rice in both regions. Asian cultivated rice, Oryza sa...

Aim Domestication is an ongoing well-described process. However, while many have studied the changes domestication causes in the genetic landscape, few have explored the way domestication changes the geographic landscape in which the plants exist. Therefore, the goal of this study was to understand how the domestication status changed the suitable...

Plant roots release exudates that fuel microbial activities and can structure rhizosphere microbial communities, but how different plant species use their root exudate to potentially select for different soil microbes in the rhizosphere is not well understood. Here, we investigated how root exudate from plants of three diverging lineages, Lactuca s...

Climate change is expected to put significant pressure on global food production. Although previous work has explored impacts of climate, management, and genetics on food production, additional research is needed to examine the effects of large-scale climate modes at local and regional scales. This study explores the impact of climate variability o...

Turmeric (Curcuma longa) and related Curcuma species have been used traditionally in India, China, Hawaii, and other cultures for millennia. Today they are used around the world for spice, medicine, dye, and religious purposes. Recent biomedical studies have corroborated the long-known traditional medicinal values of turmeric and its constituent cu...

Rainbows contribute to human wellbeing by providing an inspiring connection to nature. Because the rainbow is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that results from the refraction of sunlight by rainwater droplets, changes in precipitation and cloud cover due to anthropogenic climate forcing will alter rainbow distribution. Yet, we lack a basic unders...

Societal Impact Statement Taro is a root crop with wide geographic range and high cultural significance to Indigenous peoples of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Taro Leaf Blight (TLB) is a worldwide disease of taro, and Hawaiian taro varieties exhibited little resistance to it. To improve TLB‐resistance, conventional breeding was conducted by hand‐pollina...

Calcium oxalate raphide crystals are found in bundles in intravacuolar membrane chambers of specialized idioblasts cells of most plant families. Aroid raphides are proposed to cause acridity in crops such as taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott). Acridity is irritation that causes itchiness and pain when raw/insufficiently cooked tissues are eaten...

Understanding the genetic basis of local adaptation in natural plant populations, particularly crop wild relatives, may be highly useful for plant breeding. By characterizing genetic variation for adaptation to potentially stressful environmental conditions, breeders can make targeted use of crop wild relatives to develop cultivars for novel or cha...

Cannabis sativa L. (Cannabaceae) is an annual flowering herb of Eurasian origin that has been associated with humans for over 26,000 years. Multiple independent domestications occurred with different events leading to use as food, fiber, and medicine, with human intervention likely accelerating a division in the genus with varietals broadly known t...

Phenomics has emerged as the technology of choice for understanding quantitative genetic variation in plant physiology and plant breeding. Phenomics has allowed for unmatched precision in exploring plant life cycles and physiological patterns. As new technologies are developed, it is still vital to follow best practices for designing and planning t...

Global climate change is having a significant effect on agriculture by causing greater precipitation variability and an increased risk of drought. To mitigate these effects, it is important to identify specific traits, adaptations, and germplasm that improve tolerance to soil water deficit. Local varieties, known as landraces, have undergone genera...

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is consistently seen as a top priority; however, STEM programs often suffer from low retention. Students who start in STEM degree programs often lose interest or face obstacles that cause them to leave. Here, we describe a non‐traditional approach meant to encourage a range of stude...

Intensive cultivation of ‘uala (sweet potato) in the Leeward Kohala field system on Hawai’i Island supported substantial populations of Native Hawaiians prior to its abandonment in the 19th century. Productivity is influenced by the heterogeneity of the climate and biogeochemical soil characteristics across the substantial ecological gradient. Agri...

Sugarcane is one of the most economically important crops with particular cultural and economic significance in the Hawaiian Islands. The historical influence of sugarcane in Hawai‘i tends to overshadow the fact that Native Hawaiians cultivated dozens of unique varieties of sugarcane for almost a millennium before the arrival of Europeans. The obje...

Understanding the factors driving ecological and evolutionary interactions of economically important plant species is important for agricultural sustainability. The geography of crop wild relatives, including wild potatoes (Solanum section Petota), have received attention; however, such information has not been analysed in combination with phylogen...

Food production strategies and patterns are being altered in response to climate change. Enhancing the adaptation of important food crops to novel climate regimes will be critical to maintaining world food supplies. Climate change is altering the suitability of production areas for crops such as potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) making future productiv...

Agriculture is a designed system with the largest areal footprint of any human activity. In some cases, the designs within agriculture emerged over thousands of years, such as the use of rows for the spatial organization of crops. In others, designs were deliberately chosen and implemented over decades as occurred during the Green Revolution. Curre...

Selection during plant domestication and improvement often decreases genetic variation, including variation that confers adaptation to local conditions. We report spatial and temporal variation in fitness (seed yield), local adaptation, and segregating genetic variation within three races of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) with differing domest...

All living things on Earth contain a unique code within them, called DNA. DNA is organised into genes, similar to the way letters are organised into words. Genes give our bodies instructions on how to function. However, the exact DNA code is different even between individuals within the same species. We call this genetic diversity. Genetic diversit...

Global climate change is having a significant effect on agriculture by causing greater precipitation variability and an increased risk of drought. To mitigate these effects, it is important to identify specific traits, adaptations, and germplasm that improve tolerance to soil water deficit. Local varieties, known as landraces, have undergone genera...

Adopting modern gene-editing technologies for trait improvement in agriculture requires important workflow developments, yet these developments are not often discussed. Using tropical crop systems as a case study, we describe a workflow broken down into discrete processes with specific steps and decision points that allow for the practical applicat...

Through plant agriculture, humans have modified their natural environment to produce food, fiber, fuel, and medicine. These products are the result of artificial selection that favors the accumulation of desirable phenotypes over time. This conscious, or subconscious, selection is initiated by the phenomenon of domestication, which is a well‐descri...

Wildfires ravage lands in seasonally-dry regions, imposing high costs on infrastructure maintenance and human habitation at the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Current fire mitigation approaches present upfront costs with uncertain long-term payoffs. Instead, we show that a simple landscape intervention on human-managed wildlands -- buffers of a lo...

Producing ‘Hawaiian Heritage’ cultivars can raise the market value of locally grown sweet potatoes and increase small farmer earnings in Hawaii. Twelve sweet potato breeding lines (Ipomea batatas L.), derived from the Hawaiian maternal parent ‘Mohihi’, together with four check varieties, were trialed under organic management conditions across three...

Plant breeding has been central to global increases in crop yields. Breeding deserves praise for helping to establish better food security, but also shares the responsibility of unintended consequences. Much work has been done describing alternative agricultural systems that seek to alleviate these externalities, however, breeding methods and breed...

Improved nitrogen (N) use is key to future food security and environmental sustainability. While many regions still experience N shortages, agriculture is the leading global emitter of N2O due to losses exacerbated by N surpluses in other regions. In order to sustainably maintain or increase food production, farmers and their advisors need a compre...

How altmetrics could help level the playing field for women in STEM | Nature Index https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/how-altmetrics-level-playing-field-women-stem-research-bias 1/10 Home (/) / News (/news-blog) / How altmetrics could help level the playing field for women in STEM Sign up (/signup) ?u=https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/how-al...

Science attempts to be a meritocracy; however, in recent years, there has been increasing evidence for systematic gender bias against women. This bias is present in many metrics commonly used to evaluate scientific productivity, which in turn influences hiring and career success. Here we explore a new metric, the Altmetric Attention Score, and find...

The diversity observed among crop wild relatives (CWRs) and their ability to flourish in unfavorable and harsh environments have drawn the attention of plant scientists and breeders for many decades. However, it is also recognized that the benefit gained from using CWRs in breeding is a potential rose between thorns of detrimental genetic variation...

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam.) is one of the most important staple crops globally with particular cultural and economic significance in the Hawaiian Islands, yet the extent to which traditional cultivars persist remains unknown. The objective of this study was to elucidate the relationships between traditional Hawaiian sweet potato variet...

Enabling food security requires access to a broad range of genetic resources to facilitate crop breeding. This need is increased in a climate change scenario, which will require the production of novel crops adapted to new conditions. However, many major crops have reduced genetic diversity due to the genetic bottlenecks that they have experienced...

Cover cropping is considered a cornerstone practice in sustainable agriculture; however, little attention has been paid to the cover crop production supply chain. In this Perspective, we estimate land use requirements to supply the United States maize production area with cover crop seed, finding that across 18 cover crops, on average 3.8% (median...

Sunflowers are well-established model organisms in evolutionary biology; studies of them have made important contributions to our understanding of hybridization as an evolutionarily constructive process. Here, after introducing earlier foundational work, we review recent population genomics studies in this group. We discuss the origin of sunflowers...

Background World population is projected to reach 9–11 billion by 2050, raising concerns about food system security and sustainability. Modeling food systems are often a way to understand current and future dynamics. The most common model, first articulated by Malthus (Malthusian), shows population growth as an exponential function and food produc...

Understanding the role of biotic and abiotic factors that drive ecological and evolutionary interactions of economically important plant species is key for sustainability. Wild potatoes (Solanum section Petota), given their global importance for food security and the large amount of diversity, were chosen as a model system to better understand thes...

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is an important transporter of solutes and fresh water in coastal systems worldwide. In high island systems with a mixed semidiurnal tidal cycle driving SGD, coastal biogeochemistry is temporally and spatially variable. Past studies have shown that SGD covaries with the local species composition, diversity, and...

Global biodiversity hotspots are areas containing high levels of species richness, endemism and threat. Similarly, regions of agriculturally relevant diversity have been identified where many domesticated plants and animals originated, and co-occurred with their wild ancestors and relatives. The agro-biodiversity in these regions has, likewise, oft...

We know that it can be tough to be a person of colour working in ecology and evolution. Here is what has worked for us.

Taro ( Colocasia esculenta ) is a food staple widely cultivated in the humid tropics of Asia, Africa, Pacific and the Caribbean. One of the greatest threats to taro production is Taro Leaf Blight caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora colocasiae . Here we describe a de novo taro genome assembly and use it to analyze sequence data from a Taro...

: Interest in the development of organically grown vegetable crops has risen over the past decades due to consumer preferences. However, most crops that have desirable consumer traits have been bred in conventional growing conditions, and their transfer to an organic setting is challenging. Here, the organically grown Hawaiian pumpkin (Cucurbita mo...

Cover cropping is considered a cornerstone practice in sustainable agriculture; however, little attention has been paid to the cover crop production supply chain. In this Perspective, we estimate land use requirements to supply the United States maize production area with cover crop seed, finding that across 18 cover crops, on average 3.8% (median...

Since the mid-20th century, crop breeding has driven unprecedented yield gains. Breeders generally select for broadly- and reliably-performing varieties that display little genotype-by-environment interaction (GxE). In contrast, ecological theory predicts that across environments that vary spatially or temporally, the most productive population wil...

Resolving the origin of endangered taxa is an essential component of conservation. This information can be used to guide efforts of bolstering genetic diversity, and also enables species recovery and future evolutionary studies. Here, we used low-coverage whole genome sequencing to clarify the origin of Helianthus schweinitzii, an endangered tetrap...

Graphics are becoming increasingly important for scientists to effectively communicate their findings to broad audiences, but most researchers lack expertise in visual media. We suggest collaboration between scientists and graphic designers as a way forward and discuss the results of a pilot project to test this type of collaboration.

Aim To fill critical knowledge gaps with regard to the distributions and conservation status of the wild relatives of chile peppers (Capsicum L.). Location The study covered the potential native ranges of currently recognized wild Capsicum taxa, throughout the Americas. Methods We modelled the potential distributions of 37 wild taxa in the genus,...

R script for taro linkage mapping using program onemap. This script was applied to create a linkage map for a taro mapping population resistant to taro leaf blight. The genotype file was constructed by calling SNPs using genotyping by sequencing data set using a taro genome reference genome available from NCBI's genbank under Bioproject PRJNA567267...

This study chronicles the ongoing process to domesticate an interspecific trigenomic tetraploid hybrid sunflower derived from a series of interspecific crosses between Helianthus annuus and Helianthus tuberosus. The goal of this process is to develop a perennial oilseed crop that can produce both high value vegetable oil and continuous ground-cover...

Taro [Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott] is an ancient, tropical root crop that is morphologically diverse with over 10,000 landraces. It is the fifth most produced root crop in the world and is mainly grown in tropical Africa, China, New Guinea, and many Pacific islands. Taro typically is grown for its starchy corm (i.e., underground stem), although...

Climate change is expected to severely impact farming in sub-Saharan Africa. Now research shows that crop wild relatives might be able to secure Africa’s existing cropping practices by providing the genetic diversity needed to adapt crops to climates that they have never seen before.

Whole genome duplication (WGD) events are common in many plant lineages, but the ploidy status and possible occurrence of intraspecific ploidy variation are unknown for most species. Standard methods for ploidy determination are chromosome counting and flow cytometry approaches. While flow cytometry approaches typically use fresh tissue, an increas...

Premise We developed a target enrichment panel for phylogenomic studies of Dioscorea, an economically important genus with incompletely resolved relationships. Methods Our bait panel comprises 260 low‐ to single‐copy nuclear genes targeted to work in Dioscorea, assessed here using a preliminary taxon sampling that includes both distantly and close...

Aeroponic cloning is a great strategy to maintain desired genotypes by generating a whole new plant from cuttings. While this propagation technique has been demonstrated for tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), no protocol has been developed for peppers (Capsicum spp.). The ability to clonally propagate different Capsic...

Root and tuber crops are staples in diets across the world. They are favored due to a large yield associated with the small acreage needed to grow. Generally, they tend to be fairly robust to insect and disease pests and have historically been used as starvation food. Some root and tuber crops, such as potato, sweet potato, or cassava, are the prim...

This chapter explores plants that are used for medicinal and social uses. It first gives a brief overview of taxa that are found throughout North America, how and where they are conserved and how they are distributed. It then looks at four economically important taxa, Theobroma cacao L. (cacao), Nicotiana tabacum L. (tobacco), Actaea racemosa L. (b...

Societal Impact Statement Plant breeding is crucial for improving agricultural crops for human use. However, an urgent rethink is needed to ensure the next generation of plant breeders have the necessary breadth of skills to provide ever more efficient, nutritious, profitable, and environmentally sustainable crops. Plant breeding is a multifaceted...