**Narrator**

Here on the "Big Island" of Hawaii, less than a mile from windward
coast, is the fertile plantation of the Mauna Kea Banana Company. Its
owner, Richard Ha, has been farming on this island for the past 30
years.

**Richard Ha -- Banana farmer**

People eat a lot of bananas-it's the most popular fruit. And we grow it
here-we're the largest farm in the state, but that also means it's the
largest farm in the United States.

**Narrator**

Bananas are big business here, generating \$10 million dollars annually.
It's easy to see why at the weekly farmer's market here in Hilo.
Hawaii-grown varieties account for most of the bananas consumed by the
state's residents. The local crop provides fresh, affordable nutrition
for the islanders.

**Richard Ha**

Banana prices haven't gone up in the last 10-15 years-as long as I can
remember. But all the other costs have gone up.

**Narrator**

That situation became even more serious when Richard's farm was hit by a
disease called banana bunchy top virus or BBTV. As the name suggests,
the tops of the banana plants become contorted or bunched up. Inside,
the virus enters the plant's cells and takes over the protein and
DNA-synthesizing machinery of the cells --sapping the tree of its energy
to produce fruit.

**Richard Ha**

We found the banana bunchy top virus on our farm at Kao and it was
widespread enough that it was going to be impossible to just take out
the ones that were infected and still have a viable farm.

**Narrator**

The infestation cost Richard 100 acres of productive trees. In the
competitive banana business where daily operations are fined-tuned to
shave even a cent off the per/pound price, the impact was dramatic.

**Richard Ha**

One day you're supplying people that you've been supplying for 20 years.
Then the next day you're saying "I don't have any fruit.

**Narrator**

Back at the University of Hawaii's main campus in Honolulu, scientists
and students from the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human
Resources are attacking the problem. The research, funded by the
Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, is focusing
on how the virus spreads to banana trees

**Rodrigo Almeida-University of Hawaii**

We gave growers that are participating in the project GPS units like
this one and they go out in the field they are sampling for, looking for
sick plants with bunchy-top they ...press a little button and they
gather the GPS position of that one plant.

**Narrator**

Back at the lab, co-investigator Mark Wright plots specific trees on a
grid. Distances between plants are precisely measured, and the spread of
the virus, caused by insects called banana aphids, is tracked.

**Rodrigo Almeida**

What we hope is that at the end we can come up with a system so that if
the farmer finds one sick plant, he can cut that one plant and maybe cut
a few more plants surrounding it to avoid the spread of the disease in
the field. So it's basically a way of reducing the spread before the
symptoms show up.

You want to be sure you have the least number of plants removed so that
the farmer is still profiting from this management strategy, but you
also want to be sure that he's reducing the amount of disease out in the
field.

**Narrator**

Finding that fine balance is just one part of the research. Rodrigo and
his team is also taking on Pentalonia nigronervosa --the banana aphid
responsible spreading the virus. This slide here shows one approach to
decreasing the aphid population.

**Rodrigo Almeida**

That's a little banana aphid which was inoculated or infected with a
fungus. And the fungus is growing on the aphid and killing the aphid.

**Narrator**

Back on the Big Island, growers like Richard Ha are glad to work with
the University of Hawaii in finding solutions for virus control. That
effort is just in time. In the aggressive world of banana production,
strong, healthy plants are vital to their future.

**Richard Ha**

The disease is manageable. It's just that it's a thin-margin business
and you've really got to be careful and there's not much room for error.

**Announcer VO**

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of the Pacific, log on to this web site.