Changing Default Editor in profile

[Huy Ton That]

under my home directory for root under .profile I added the line:

EDITOR=pico;    export EDITOR

where no such line existed for EDITOR before; this line exists in my
personal account that I use and my default for external launched editors is
now pico such that I can edit crontab stuff easily.  However, when I ssh in
and then su, I try to run crontab only to find it is still booting into 'vi'
by default.  Any ideas how I can get this loaded?