Construction of the $20 million first phase of the federal Agricultural Research Service project will begin in December and should be finished in mid-2006, said center director Dennis Gonsalves. It will include 30,000 square feet of laboratory and other space for about 20 researchers.

By the end of 2008, the laboratory will be expanded to 60,000 square feet, with administration space and greenhouses, and will have nearly 200 staff members, including 35 researchers, he said.

Gonsalves told a crowd of 150 at the site, two miles from Hilo Bay, that the center will help battle fruit flies and other crop pests, and preserve strains of exotic fruit and other plant species to protect the crops' genetic diversity. Other research will focus on making crops more resistant to disease.

Speakers credited U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i, with capturing the federal funds to pay for the project.

"It wasn't too long ago, can you imagine, we had to import onions for hamburgers?" Inouye told the crowd at the groundbreaking. "Now, we export them. We export a lot of things."

Inouye said he decided in the late 1990s the research facility was needed to encourage growth in diversified agriculture after the collapse of the sugar industry on the Big Island, and to improve the odds for Hawai'i farmers who venture into new kinds of crops.

"We need to believe in them, and I think this is a demonstration of that," Inouye said. "This is a clear way to say to our farmers, 'We believe in you, we support you and we stand with you.' "