Hawaii’s seed crop industry halted a three-year slide in its total value with a moderate increase last season, according to a government report released Friday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated the local seed industry’s value at $151 million in the recently ended 2015-16 season.

That was up 7 percent from $141 million in the prior season, which represented a third straight decline from a record high of $242 million in the 2011-12 season.

Seed crops are grown year-round in Hawaii, though the main season runs November to June.

Seeds, which are grown for research and development to produce new varieties of primarily corn using genetic modification and traditional breeding techniques, have been Hawaii’s most valuable crop since 2006.

The USDA measures value of seed crops using the cost of production because the companies that grow seeds here don’t sell them. These companies produce plants with desired traits and send the seeds to the mainland for mass reproduction and sale to farmers.

Values for other crops grown for consumption in or outside Hawaii are represented by sales revenue, which usually is more than production cost.

Sugar cane typically has been the state’s No. 2 crop, generating around $70 million or $80 million in sales annually, though that will cease at the end of this year when the last sugar plantation in the state, Hawaiian Commercial &Sugar Co., shuts down on Maui.

Other top crops in Hawaii include coffee and ranching at around $50 million a year, along with macadamia nuts at around $40 million a year. Pineapple also remains big, but industry value is no longer reported to avoid disclosing sales revenue of individual private companies.

Industry observers over the last few years have said that the business of developing seeds in Hawaii had matured and that maybe companies were becoming more efficient in what they do.

However, last season industry operators shipped fewer seeds than the prior season despite the higher production cost.

Companies shipped 7.4 million pounds of seeds outside Hawaii last season, down from 8.6 million pounds in the prior season. The record was 12 million pounds in the 2009-10 season.

The report also said that the number of acres being farmed in seed crops shrank to 4,000 last season, down from 4,260 in the prior season and the peak of 6,910 in 2011-12.

Five companies — BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Syngenta — are involved in Hawaii seed research, and operate 10 farms on Oahu, Maui, Molokai and Kauai.

Though corn is the main seed produced, other seed crops grown in Hawaii include soybeans, wheat, sunflowers, rice, rapeseed and sorghum.

Seed companies value Hawaii for research and development in part because corn can be planted and raised to maturity three or four times in a year compared with only once on the mainland, thereby allowing work to advance faster.

Hawaii’s seed industry is viewed by many local agriculture leaders as being a major agricultural employer and keeping farmland in farming.

Hawaii seed growers also have been targets of environmentalists and natural-food proponents because much of the work involves genetic modification. Such concerns have led to litigation and state and county initiatives to restrict or ban work with genetically modified organisms.