NZ: Colourful kiwifruit taste of things to come
A Zespri spokeswoman said four growers were selling about 8000 trays of red kiwifruit in New Zealand during March and April.
The kiwifruit had light-green to gold coloured flesh with a red starburst in the centre, she said.
"It has a sweet, juicy taste similar to gold-fleshed kiwifruit," she told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend.
The variety came out of trials as part of Zespri's breeding programme and was not a commercialised Zespri cultivar but was naturally produced by hand-pollinating one promising parent variety with another.
Zespri had allowed the growers to sell the fruit on the local market while they transition into other varieties, she said.
Last year Zespri, Plant & Food Research and the Government invested more than $12 million in the new cultivar breeding programme.
"This programme developed the gold varieties Hort16A and Gold3, which have added more than $4 billion to the NZ economy. We have both a green kiwifruit and a different red kiwifruit in pre-commercial trials.
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