The Papaya Was Engineered. So Was the Rescue System.
Tech From Here: Hawaiʻi, by RN Collins

Alt text, credits and the words on each frame (14 of 14 frames).

Frame 1 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-01.jpg
Alt text: Two tall papaya trees loaded with green fruit stand in a Hawaiʻi Island orchard under a partly cloudy sky, with more rows of trees behind them. USDA identifies them as mature Rainbow papaya trees. They open the story with the crop itself, standing in a field rather than a lab.
Credit: Photo: Greb, USDA ARS
Words on the frame: The Papaya Was Engineered. So Was the Rescue System. / Rainbow papaya did not save Hawaiʻi’s papaya industry by itself. A rescue system had to be engineered around it.
Source page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/jan04/k10929-1/

Frame 2 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-02.jpg
Alt text: A papaya field in Hawaiʻi affected by papaya ringspot virus: rows of stunted, yellowed and mottled papaya trees on dark ground, with forest in the distance. It shows what virus pressure on a working planting looked like, the problem the story starts from.
Credit: Photo: Scot Nelson, CC0
Words on the frame: Papaya ringspot virus spread through Hawaiʻi’s production system, damaging plants and threatening commercial growing.
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prsv-13.jpg

Frame 3 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-03a.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: the third prototype of the Cornell biolistic gene gun, a metal chamber with a brass valve on top and a round window in front, photographed against a dark ground by the Smithsonian. Cornell's gene gun was the tool used to shoot the virus coat protein gene into cultured papaya tissue. This is a museum prototype, not the unit used on papaya, and it is not the plant.
Credit: Source: Smithsonian NMAH
Words on the frame: Virus-resistant papaya was a major technical intervention,
Source page: https://www.si.edu/object/biolistic-particle-gun-prototype-iii:nmah_1167048

Frame 4 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-03b.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a horticulturist at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center checks the root development of small papaya shoots in a tray, photographed by USDA in 2004. The center was contracted to produce the transgenic seed for growers. The photo is not identified as Rainbow and is not the subject of the sentence; it stands for the work between a resistant plant and an industry.
Credit: Photo: Greb, USDA ARS
Words on the frame: but a resistant plant is not yet an industry rescue.
Source page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/jan04/k10927-1/

Frame 5 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-04.jpg
Alt text: Inside a shaded greenhouse, a horticulturist and a research center director look over trays of young papaya plants. USDA identifies them as Aileen Yeh and Dennis Gonsalves with micropropagated Rainbow plants. It shows research and plant multiplication working together, two of the links the slide lists.
Credit: Photo: Greb, USDA ARS
Words on the frame: Research, seed production, regulation, grower adoption, extension, markets and trust all had to connect.
Source page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/jan04/k10926-1/

Frame 6 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-05a.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a worker in a hat and protective gear sprays fungicide from a tractor-mounted rig between rows of tall papaya trees on dark ground, a Hawaiʻi orchard photographed in the late 1980s or early 1990s by plant pathologist Wayne Nishijima. It shows the commercial production the dated record concerns, in the years before Rainbow. It is not a picture of any dated step.
Credit: Photo: Wayne Nishijima, CC0
Words on the frame: The record, in dates / By 1986: The researchers had cloned the coat protein gene of the virus / 1988: They started transforming papaya cultures / 1992: Papaya ringspot virus detected in Puna / 1995: Large Puna field trial begun
Source page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scotnelson/12818450985/

Frame 7 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-05b.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a basket of whole papayas, green to orange, photographed at Laulima Farm in Kīpahulu, Maui, in 2012 by botanists Forest and Kim Starr. The card lists the 1996 federal clearances of SunUp and Rainbow papaya. This is the kind of fruit those clearances concerned, grown in Hawaiʻi; it is not identified as Rainbow or SunUp and is not a regulatory record.
Credit: Photo: Forest and Kim Starr
Words on the frame: September 1996: USDA removed regulatory restrictions on SunUp and Rainbow / EPA: Exempted the viral coat protein from the requirement of a tolerance / FDA: Completed a food-safety consultation on the SunUp line (BNF-042)
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starr-120606-7048-Carica_papaya-fruit-Laulima_Farm_Kipahulu-Maui_(24517881513).jpg

Frame 8 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-06.jpg
Alt text: Two people stand between rows of papaya trees on dark volcanic ground in the Waiakea Conservation District, Hawaiʻi Island, each holding a papaya: a plant supervisor for Tropical Hawaiian Products and an NRCS conservationist, discussing the orchard. It shows the field-management side of papaya growing that the slide describes; neither person is a grower making the planting choice alone.
Credit: Photo: Ron Nichols, USDA NRCS
Words on the frame: Growers still had to decide what to plant, manage fields and absorb market and biological risk.
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NRCSHI97004_-_Hawaii_(2157)(NRCS_Photo_Gallery).jpg

Frame 9 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-07.jpg
Alt text: Two men in a packing shed examine green papayas in cardboard boxes after hot-forced-air treatment, a quarantine step for Hawaiʻi papaya exports, photographed by USDA in 1998. The photo is not identified as Rainbow. It shows the kind of export rule the sentence says a working crop still meets.
Credit: Photo: Scott Bauer, USDA ARS
Words on the frame: A crop can work agronomically and still encounter export rules, buyer preferences and public resistance.
Source page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/jan98/k7888-2/

Frame 10 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-08.jpg
Alt text: A line of people holding signs stands along a highway beside palm trees on Maui, with a police monitoring camera on a tripod in the foreground; this was a 2012 GMO Free Maui protest at the gate of a Monsanto test field. It shows the public disagreement over biotechnology that the story says the papaya rescue did not erase. It is not papaya-specific.
Credit: Photo: Viriditas, CC BY-SA 3.0
Words on the frame: The rescue did not erase non-GM production, contamination concerns or disagreement about biotechnology.
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Remote_police_crowd_monitoring_of_Occupy_Wall_Street_Maui_and_GMO_Free_Maui_protest.jpg

Frame 11 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-09a.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: two plantings of papaya side by side along a dirt track in Hawaiʻi, healthy dense transgenic trees on the left and sparse virus-infected trees with bare trunks on the right, photographed by University of Hawaii plant pathologist Stephen Ferreira. The source does not say this is the large Puna field trial or give its date, but it shows exactly what the trial compared: resistant plants and susceptible plants in the same field.
Credit: Photo: Stephen Ferreira, CC0
Words on the frame: What We Actually Know / What we know: In a large Puna field trial begun in 1995, transgenic plants remained resistant under heavy disease pressure while susceptible comparison plants became infected.
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prsv-11.jpg

Frame 12 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-09b.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a papaya field where most trees stand as bare, leafless trunks among weeds, with a low cinder hill behind, a field hit by Phytophthora blight, photographed by Scot Nelson of Honolulu and posted in 2011 (the file page links a University of Hawaii extension publication but gives no place or date). It shows that a papaya field can be lost to a cause other than ringspot virus, which is what saying Rainbow may be one cause among several allows. It is not a Puna ringspot field and shows nothing about Rainbow.
Credit: Photo: Scot Nelson, CC0
Words on the frame: What we do not know: “Saved the industry” is shorthand. Outcomes varied by place, grower, market and time. Rainbow may be one cause among several.
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phytophthora_blight_papaya_(5681631932).jpg

Frame 13 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-10a.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a USDA plant physiologist examines papaya plantlets growing in a petri dish in a research lab, photographed by USDA in 2004. It shows the plant-propagation work of the people and institutions in the story, not a specific Rainbow step or the seed distribution, and it is not the subject of the sentence.
Credit: Photo: Greb, USDA ARS
Words on the frame: Rainbow papaya mattered because institutions and people built a rescue system around the seed. / Read the USDA and UH record / Read the stakeholder limitations
Source page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/jan04/k10923-1/

Frame 14 of 14: tfh-hi-c14-12-10b.jpg
Alt text: Illustrative photo: a papaya cut open to show its seed cavity packed with round, dark, jelly-coated seeds, photographed at Laulima Farm in Kīpahulu, Maui, in 2012 by Forest and Kim Starr. The close slide is about the people and institutions built around the seed. This is a Hawaiʻi papaya seed cavity, not Rainbow seed and not the 1998 seed distribution.
Credit: Photo: Forest and Kim Starr
Words on the frame: Read the image rights / Read the full story at Tech From Here: Hawaiʻi
Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starr-120606-7045-Carica_papaya-fruit_and_seeds-Laulima_Farm_Kipahulu-Maui_(25051447731).jpg
