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ZESPRI’S GOLD crop will be down about 45-50% this year, but there are positives to the season.
That reduction is mostly due to about 70% of Gold growers grafting to the new Psa-resistant cultivar G3, rather than to the effects of the vine-killing disease itself.
Meanwhile, Green volumes will be the same as last year at 70 million trays. The impact of Psa on Green volumes has been “negligible”, says Simon Limmer, Zespri’s general manager of grower and government relations.
About two years of full production are lost in the transition from the old Gold variety to the new G3, he says. Gold, at 13 million trays, this season is about 45-50% down on last season and even further on the previous peak season. But this year should be the lowest volume year in the recovery phase.
“Growers have had to cut the heads off their old vines and graft a new variety into their trunk and it will take a couple of years before they start getting meaningful production. By December this year we should see confirmation of the recovery and volumes start to grow again for next season. But we won’t recover back to previous volumes for a couple of seasons.”
But the new variety, G3, is “looking really good”. “We’ve been lucky with the summer. The drought was disastrous for most of the primary sector. But for kiwifruit it had two positive effects: it countered Psa and it created high tasting kiwifruit – a vintage crop – so that’s helping in the marketplace.
“And despite some of the challenges economically in places like Europe and despite the strong headwind from a strong New Zealand dollar, the markets are performing pretty well.”
Market conditions, smaller volumes and good tasting fruit all translate into good returns, but “it is a bit early to conclude how the season is going to do”. The season closes in October-November.
As we move into the late-summer and autumn period, much of the country’s fruit growing regions are entering operationally critical windows of the horticultural calendar. The question on grower’s minds is ‘what is the outlook for the March-April harvest?’
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