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Turmeric (Curcuma longa) and related Curcuma species have been used traditionally in India, China, Hawaii, and other cultures for millennia. Today they are used around the world for spice, medicine, dye, and religious purposes. Recent biomedical studies have corroborated the long-known traditional medicinal values of turmeric and its constituent curcuminoid compounds, which have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticarcinogenic properties. As part of statewide research and extension efforts to support an expanding turmeric industry, we examined yield of 14 accessions across different climatic zones in Hawaii to observe and describe Genotype × Environmental influences. Fresh turmeric yield differed significantly among genotypes. The overall yields observed in this work ranged 11.3–57.22 t ha−1 and generally agree with those in the literature. Data from the different sites suggest that fertility and water management are able to mitigate moderate stress imposed by climate change within a certain range, but suboptimal temperatures associated with high elevation in the tropics (>1000 m) are an important driver of lower yields. This suggests that high yielding turmeric varieties may possess wide adaptability and may perform well across diverse environments. However, site-specific evaluations will still be necessary, particularly in environments outside turmeric’s environmental optima and in the presence of high pest pressure.

This study chronicles the ongoing process to domesticate an interspecific trigenomic tetraploid hybrid sunflower derived from a series of interspecific crosses between Helianthus annuus and Helianthus tuberosus. The goal of this process is to develop a perennial oilseed crop that can produce both high value vegetable oil and continuous ground-cover. Selection has focused on developing an ideotype with the domesticated morphology of H. annuus and the below-ground perennial features of H. tuberosus. The overarching challenge in the process of breeding and domesticating this interspecific perennial sunflower is overcoming obstacles associated with interploid meiosis in order to resolve a chromosomally stable hybrid population. As selection progresses through generations of intermating, there are improvements toward the desired ideotype, but selection efficiency is slowed by apparent antagonisms between annual- and perennial morphological targets and irregular meiosis which is especially problematic in a trigenomic tetraploid. This shows that keys toward perennial crop development through interspecific hybridization will be to capitalize on the abundant phenotypic variation within our population, achieve meiotic stability in order to maximize selection efficiency, and to break genetic correlations between annual and perennial traits.