Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer

Irradiation Treatment Saves Fruit, Increases Exports, and Expands Market
The State of Hawaii produces a variety of tropical fruit and vegetables, including banana, papaya, rambutan and sweet potato. However, Hawaiian agricultural production traditionally has had limited export potential, especially to the U.S. mainland, because of agricultural pests such as fruit flies. Quarantine restrictions and phytosanitary measures, therefore, have been applied to Hawaiian exports, greatly limiting the amount of product that can be exported from the islands to other markets. An effective and efficient phytosanitary treatment has been needed for many years, and the first commercial irradiation facility dedicated to the treatment of fresh farm commodities for export from Hawaii opened in 2000. The facility, however, was unable to process large amounts of commodities because each commodity required a different protocol. This created a burden as it required that entomologists develop treatments for one pest and commodity at a time, an approach that often requires years before an effective quarantine treatment is developed and approved. Drs. Peter Follett and Marisa Wall of the USDA/ARS Pacific West Area, U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center have developed generic irradiation protocols as phytosanitary control measures for a wide variety of quarantine insect pests that infest fresh commodities.

High-Resolution Imagery for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Repair Mission
Perched at the 10,000-foot crest of the dormant Haleakala volcano, the Maui Space Surveillance Site combines state-of-the-art satellite tracking capabilities with a research and development facility that is the only one of its kind in the world. The site houses the largest telescope in the Department of Defense, the 3.6-meter Advanced Electro Optical System (AEOS), as well as several other telescopes. Managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, the volcano-top observatory and lab are part of the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site-known throughout the scientific community as AMOS.

Beginning in 2007 and continuing through the Space Shuttle Atlantis repair flight in May 2009, AMOS's Space and Missile Team transferred data from its unique electro-optical assets, imaging technology expertise, and knowledge products in a nontraditional way to help NASA meet its operational needs for the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Intricate planning, execution, processing, and dissemination techniques and processes were developed and matured by AMOS's Space and Missile Team to provide high-resolution imagery of the Hubble telescope. The specific purpose of this imagery was to help NASA identify and evaluate damaged areas on the telescope that needed to be repaired or replaced. Providing this capability from Earth-bound ground assets reduced the need for high-risk, high-cost, manned NASA missions.

Throughout the planning and execution of the Hubble repair mission, NASA called on the support of the AMOS team, its assets, and its many exceptional resources. The Space and Missile Team, comprised of well-experienced R&D and operational personnel, employed, exploited, and developed multiple techniques and technologies to ensure that AMOS provided the best and most usable products for NASA's operational requirements and goals. Thanks in part to the excellent support of the AMOS team and resources, the Hubble repair mission was a great success. The synergistic results of the project have now been transferred and incorporated into other programs and site goals to support the operational community and the warfighter.

Phytosanitary Irradiation Treatment Protocol
Research into the practical aspects of using irradiation technology as a phytosanitary treatment for fresh fruits and vegetables began in Hawaii in the mid-1960s, resulting in formal approval in 1989 for use of irradiation as a quarantine treatment to export Hawaii-grown papaya. Beginning in 1995, under a special regulatory permit, Hawaii became the first to use a quarantine irradiation treatment commercially to export fresh produce. These first exports included a variety of tropical fruits (mainly papaya, rambutan, and litchi) and vegetables to Illinois and New Jersey for treatment and subsequent distribution to retail markets in 17 states. The most important result of this program was determining that wholesalers, retailers, and consumers were not adverse to buying irradiated fresh produce if the product was of high quality and available at a fair price, and that fruit growers, the business community, and regulatory agencies all supported the use of this technology. In 2000, the first commercial irradiation facility dedicated to treatment of fresh commodities for export opened in Hawaii. This facility now treats more than 15 million pounds of produce for export to U.S. mainland markets. Dr. Peter Follett has worked closely with the irradiation facility and the tropical fruit and vegetable industries to develop and refine phytosanitary irradiation treatments that have resulted in a significant expansion of Hawaiian agricultural exports.

Dr. Follett achieved Federal Registration for a generic irradiation protocol for fruits and vegetables in 2006. Irradiation therefore became available as a phytosanitary control measure for a wide variety of quarantine insect pests and commodities. For the first time, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) adopted generic quarantine irradiation treatments for broad groups of insects without further need of specific efficacy data for each target species and potentially infested commodity, the first-ever use of the generic dose approach. Dr. Follett was instrumental in promoting the generic treatment rule and establishing its scientific foundation. He conducted research on key quarantine pests to fill crucial research gaps, and he wrote the technical report that recommended the generic treatment approach to APHIS, along with specific treatments for each different pest group. Dr. Follett also conducted research on 12 key quarantine insects and won approval by USDA-APHIS for specific irradiation doses for these pests below previously approved generic doses. This represents the culmination of two decades of research into the practicality and promise of irradiation.