Hawai'i fields once used for sugarcane and pineapple now serve as the incubators for hybrids and new, genetically manipulated strains of one of the nation's oldest staple foods: corn.

Industry experts estimate about half of the nation's corn today has its beginnings in biotechnology, meaning at least some of a plant's genetic origins can be traced back to a laboratory instead of an open field.

While the Islands are not a major source of the corn eaten by consumers or livestock, many parents of the plants that yield the seeds sold to farmers around the nation and the world have their origins in Hawai'i.

"Most any corn hybrid, and a lot of the soybean that would be planted, spent some time in Hawai'i in its earlier part ... " said Cindy Goldstein, Waialua-based manager of outreach at Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a subsidiary of DuPont. "We're not producing something that goes directly into a bag for sale. But something that a farmer in Romania is growing or that a farmer in Brazil or Argentina is growing did spend time in the soil in Hawai'i in its earlier production stages ... "

About 92 percent of Hawai'i's growing $60.2 million seed industry is corn — and about half of that involves biotech varieties, Goldstein said.

And while only about 1,700 acres — many of those on O'ahu and Kaua'i — are dedicated to nurturing the biotech progenitors of the plants eventually used to grow food and feed, Hawai'i figures big in the industry.

Growing the number of hybrids of corn needed to develop a desired strain in a greenhouse is almost impossible, said Nathan Danielson, director of biotechnology for the National Corn Growers Association.

Along with fellow winter refuges Puerto Rico and Chile, Hawai'i enables the industry to grow in a real environment every month of the year.

"Although I guess you could make the case that Hawai'i's kind of an unreal environment compared to Iowa. But it really gives us the ability to advance new and beneficial crops year-round as opposed to just seasonally," Danielson said.

Hawai'i has a history of being on the front lines of genetic manipulation. In the late 1990s, a transgenetic variety of papaya helped save the Big Island's papaya industry when local crops were devastated by the papaya ring virus.

Though the effect of genetic modification on crop yields is impressive — biotech gave corn a boost of more than $150 million boost in 2003, according to the National Corn Growers Association — the new technology hasn't been entirely welcome.

A 2003 lawsuit by environmental groups led to a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court in Honolulu compelling the U.S. Department of Agriculture to disclose the locations of permits for open-field testing of pharmaceutical crops in Hawai'i. Last week another lawsuit was filed, this time challenging the state Board of Agriculture over its approval of a permit allowing a company to grow genetically modified algae off the coast of the Big Island to use for medicines for asthma and other ailments.

The year-round growing climate in Hawai'i pushes the biotech system faster than places on the Mainland, Danielson said.