A notorious new pest has landed on Maui, and coffee growers across the islands fear the plant disease could devastate — and maybe even transform — the $54 million industry in Hawaii.

Coffee leaf rust, a pest that has tormented other major coffee-growing regions, has been identified for the first time by University of Hawaii scientists from coffee plant samples collected last week in managed and wild plants in Haiku, Maui, the state Department of Agriculture said.

Samples were sent to U.S. Department of Agriculture National Identification Serv­ices on the mainland, which confirmed that the invader is the same fungus that coffee growers have been fighting all over the world.

“This is huge,” said Gerry Ross, owner of Kupaa Farms in Kula and president of the Maui Coffee Association. “Coffee leaf rust could change the way coffee is farmed in Hawaii.”

Ross said the coffee industry recently has been dealing with the devastating effects of the invasive coffee borer beetle and now this, with some researchers estimating potential yield losses from the rust between 30% and 80%.

The industry will survive, he said, but it probably won’t happen without a lot of pain, and it might even require planting whole new varieties that are more resistant to the fungus.

That might mean, among other things, that the plants that currently produce the world-famous coffee in Kona may not be the same ones found there in the future, he said, and therefore the flavor could change.

The Hawaii Coffee Association held an emergency meeting Wednesday to get an update from state agriculture officials on the rust threat.

In a letter to the coffee industry late last week, the department said it was asking those on Maui to refrain from transporting coffee plants, coffee green waste, coffee cherries and pulp, used coffee processing and harvesting equipment, used coffee bags or green coffee beans around Maui or to neighbor islands until more is known of the infestation’s extent.

“This will create some challenges to the entire coffee industry and could easily be spread to neighbor islands through plant materials or tourist clothes,” Suzanne Shriner, former president of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association, said in an email.

State officials said leaves from a coffee farm in the Haiku area showing rust symptoms were turned in to the department Oct. 21.

Additional checks in the area revealed plants with rust symptoms at three additional locations, two of which were found in wild coffee plants.

Kevin Hoffman, administrator of the department’s state Plant Industry Division, said employees from multiple agencies are continuing to survey Maui and have extended the search statewide in an attempt to assess the damaging invader’s reach.

“Hawaii has been very lucky not to have this up until now,” he said.

While the pest could cause a large decrease in yields, the infestation can be managed, he said — although it could require the kind of resources a lot of small farmers might have trouble coming up with.

Hoffman said he would expect the state to generate a response plan for how to deal with the threat and possibly establish restrictions on the interisland transport of coffee.

Coffee leaf rust, or Hemileia vastatrix, was first discovered in Sri Lanka in 1869 and ended up wiping out the island’s vast coffee production, which was eventually replaced with tea.

The pathogen is now found in coffee-growing regions in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central and South America.

“This is something we’ve worked for years to try to prevent from coming here,” Hoffman said. “It’s been on the radar for a long time.”

The state has restrictions on the importation of coffee plants and nonfumigated green coffee beans, he said, and UH has conducted periodic statewide surveys to search for the rust.

Officials said the fungus can cause severe defoliation of the coffee plants, with infected leaves dropping prematurely and plant and berry growth stunted.

Usually, yellow-orange rust spots appear on the upper surface of leaves. On the underside of the leaves, infectious spores appear in what looks like a patch of yellow to dark orange powder.

Hoffman said he suspects the coffee leaf rust has not been in Hawaii for long. It is an aggressive disease, he said, that produces spores that are highly mobile, able to travel for miles in the wind, move in surface water and hitchhike on people.

He added that the rust is likely something that Hawaii’s coffee farmers are going to have to live with, because it hasn’t been eradicated anywhere in the world.