Growers make do as gold kiwifruit crop plummets
New fruit variety will take two years to bed in, writes Catherine Harris. The gold kiwifruit harvest has finished and estimates of the crop are still half those of last year, as the effects of the Psa kiwifruit virus fully take hold.
Zespri, the country’s major kiwifruit exporter, said numbers were being finalised but its export gold kiwifruit volumes were expected to be 12 to 13 million trays.
Last year it exported 24.6 million trays, which was down 16 per cent because of the virus.
Zespri spokeswoman Rachel Lynch said many growers had been working to overcome Psa by grafting in a more resistant variety, Gold3, but it would take two years for the vines to bed in.
Green kiwifruit volumes were looking on a par with previous years. Volumes of the Haywards variety were 70 million trays last year and were expected to be similar or slightly less in 2013.
Although the fruit was slightly smaller, the drought had given the industry much sweeter fruit which, combined with strong sales, was encouraging for grower returns, Lynch said. ‘‘2013 is a vintage year for taste.’’
On the outskirts of Tauranga, gold kiwifruit grower Chris Dunstan said the outcomes for his peers varied widely.
‘‘A lot of us have no crop. We went, in our particular case, from having 9000 bins last year to about 200 this year.’’
He would manage this year by diversifying some of his activities, selling a couple of ancillary properties and relying on the bumper returns Zespri got for his crop last year.
‘‘I would say the jury’s still very much Gold kiwifruit supplies are running low as more kiwifruit orchards test positive for the Psa virus. out as yet as to whether it will be economic for some growers to grow Gold3. I’m sure there will be a percentage that will be able to grow it OK, but there’ll be a much wider spread of grower performance than there has been in the past.
‘‘It’s not going to be like the past when kiwifruit was relatively easy to grow.’’
The Psa virus is thought to have spread to about 64 per cent of kiwifruit orchards but experts say the hot dry summer has helped rein in the advance of the disease, and the results will be clearer in the spring.