LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff
Warmer weather might be getting more people into the garden.
If you’re getting ready for a bit of pre-summer gardening this week, you might be thinking about loading up on fruit plants.
But while you might pick up a few lemon trees or some tomato plants, what you probably won’t find in the shops are kiwifruit vines.
There are two main reasons for that.
For the basic green variety, you can blame – in large part – PSA, which struck the country in 2010.
A spokesperson for King’s Plant Barn said concerns about the kiwifruit pathogen, and its ability to spread widely, meant commercial growers took steps to protect themselves, and decided to stop home gardeners from purchasing plants for domestic use.
There were concerns at the time that the industry could be wiped out.
Incredible Edibles, which produces a lot of the fruit trees and other edible plants for sale in plant shops around the country, said that meant that most, if not all, growers chose not to produce kiwifruit plants any more, because of the regulations.
The production and sale of kiwifruit plants is now controlled by the Kiwifruit Vine Health Authority, which has to licence any nursery that wants to grow kiwifruit.
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Growers need a licence for red kiwifruit.
There are only a small number of certified nurseries around the country that sell for home use and people who buy from them must maintain traceability records.
Kiwifruit Vine Health chief executive Leanne Stewart said the sale of plants from certified nurseries and sellers was legally controlled with a National Kiwifruit Pathway Management Plan.
Svetla Sofkova-Bobcheva, a senior lecturer in horticulture production at Massey University, said the biosecurity protections for kiwifruit were now also designed to tackle other threats as well as PSA.
She said kiwifruit plants could disseminate PSA even if they did not have symptoms.
“The whole scheme is really to make sure every plant is produced securely... economically, this single pathogen could be very detrimental, it could cause significant losses. Kiwifruit is a major export for horticulture in New Zealand.”
There are other restrictions on gold and red varieties.
A Zespri spokesperson said a licence was required to grow these.
“Zespri owns the plant variety rights (PVR) for SunGold Kiwifruit, as well as RubyRed. This means growers must purchase a license to be able to grow Zespri’s proprietary varieties and are bound by a Zespri Kiwifruit Variety Licence which gives growers the right to acquire plant material for growing a variety within the licensed area.”
Gardener Pai Cunningham said she had always wanted to grow kiwifruit but had been told about the rules by a friend who grew plants commercially. “I understand the need to protect our biodiversity but it would still be nice.”
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October 18, 2023 at 11:00PM
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