The award will be presented 6 p.m. Saturday July 26 in Room 317 of the Hawaii Convention Center during the ASPB annual meeting. Immediately following the award presentation, Dr. Gonsalves will give a presentation on his research in the Perspectives of Science Leaders Program.
A research discovery by Dr. Gonsalves and his colleagues led to the development of enhanced papaya. Using techniques of modern biotechnology, paired with conventional plant breeding, Gonsalves and colleagues engineered the tropical fruit, papaya, to resist attack by ringspot virus.
Seeds of the research team's ringspot-resistant papayas were made available in 1998 for growers to evaluate, including those whose orchards had been hit by the virus. Now widely planted, the new varieties have shown excellent resistance to the virus that once threatened to devastate the state's papaya production.
Hawaii's farmers produce nearly the entire U.S. papaya crop. Their 2001 harvest of more than 55 million pounds had a farm-gate value of more than $14 million.
Dr. Gonsalves and his colleagues were honored in 2002 with the Alexander von Humboldt Award for Agriculture. The Humboldt award is given annually to the person or team making the most significant contribution to U.S. agriculture during the previous five years.
Dr. Gonsalves is a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (ARS). He is director of the U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, headquartered in Hilo, Hawaii. Dr. Gonsalves was born and raised on a sugar plantation in Kohala, Hawaii. After graduating from Kamehameha School in 1961, he attended the University of Hawaii and received a Bachelors degree in Horticulture in 1965 and a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology in 1968. He obtained his PhD in Plant Pathology in 1972 from the University of California, Davis.
From 1972-1977, he worked on viruses that affect citrus at the University of Florida, advancing from assistant to associate professor. He then joined Cornell University at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York and worked there from 1977 to May 2002. He became full professor in 1986 and was appointed to one of the endowed Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor positions in 1995.
ASPB is a non-profit science society of about 6,000 scientists conducting research in the United States and some 50 other nations. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, ASPB expects 1,700 scientists to participate at its annual meeting July 25-30, 2003 at the Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawaii.