Ōpōtiki grower wins 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
The first kiwifruit for the new season are now being picked and not surprisingly this is taking place in the kiwifruit capital of NZ - Te Puke.
Zespri's new RubyRed is the first variety to be picked and it's also the first time this new sweet and tasty kiwifruit has been picked commercially. It will be available on some NZ supermarket shelves and also exported.
Zespri's chief grower, industry and sustainability officer Carol Ward says as well as a continued increase in SunGold Kiwifruit volumes this season, the company is excited about the first year of commercial volumes of Zespri RubyRed Kiwifruit becoming available.
"We know this is keenly anticipated by our consumers in New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and China," she says.
Ward says the industry requires 24,000 people to pick and pack the crop this year. But she says forecast surges in Covid-19 infection rates are expected to restrict the availability of New Zealanders.
"In addition, the opening of New Zealand's borders is expected to be too late to replace the 6,500 backpackers usually required for harvest," she says.
NZ has some 2,800 growers who produce kiwifruit across 13,000 hectares of orchards between Kerikeri in the north and Motueka in the south.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
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