In late June of last year, machete-armed vandals destroyed 8,500 papaya trees at a 17-acre farm in the Kapoho area of the island. Two months previous to that, someone chopped down nearly 400 of ...

KAPOHO, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - A Big Island farmer is devastated by the destruction of thousands of his papaya trees at the hands of vandals. Laureto Julian says his farm has been in his family ...

A Puna farmer now says he lost 13,000 papaya trees valued at more than $120,000 ... the late hours of June 29 on 17 acres he leases in Kapoho. He estimated the loss initially at $100,000.

Rainbow papaya makes up about 77 percent of the crop now, with some farmers still growing the non-transgenic Kapoho Solo to export to markets, like Japan, that are slow to embrace modified food.

Kapoho and SunUp are parental cultivars of the hybrid Rainbow that accounts for majority of the papaya fruit produced in Hawaii. Kapoho is a popular commercial cultivar that is pear-shaped with a ...