Undergraduate students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa transplanted 1,200 ʻAwahia onion seedlings for the UH Seed Lab in November. Planting this UH-developed variety is a part of the lab’s mission to sustain local agricultural resources.
These seedlings will grow out over the season for bulb production, and then will be cured, dried and stored for the 2026 planting cycle, when the bulbs will generate seeds for future crops.
This is part of a broader effort to restore the UH Seed Lab’s inventory following the COVID-19 pandemic. A surge in home gardening around 2020 led to the depletion of more than 50% of some seed supplies at the lab.
The lab, which is part of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR), has a new leader in manager Quynn Cytryn. She is beginning to ramp up production with the help of CTAHR agricultural technicians and staff at the College’s Urban Garden Center to restore seed stock to pre-pandemic levels.
“Mahalo to the Seed Lab’s many supporters in the community, backyard gardeners, local farmers, and CTAHR faculty and staff for their patience and kokua,” said Cytryn. “We are excited about the future of the lab and local agriculture.”
Seed grow-out, harvest and processing can take up to eight months. The lab is actively making progress to replenish their typical offering of approximately 30 varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs that have been bred by UH researchers to adapt to Hawaiʻi’s tropical climate and volcanic soils.
The next phase will be at CTAHR’s Waimānalo CARES Center, where the team will assist with transplanting the seedlings into the field for next season’s bulb production. They are planting approximately 800 bulbs from the previous harvest to produce seed for future ʻAwahia onion lines.
