Northland, NZ produces $40m in kiwifruit
Crops of the SunGold variety this season are expected to be significantly more than last season while the green Hayward variety will be down.
The kiwifruit industry is recovering from being hit by the bacterial kiwifruit vine disease Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) in 2010 and Northland, like most other regions in New Zealand, has been significantly affected by its impact. Kiwifruit growers around the country are overcoming Psa by replacing the Hort16A gold kiwifruit variety with the more tolerant SunGold gold and organic gold Gold3 variety.
Zespri figures show there were 224ha of gold and organic gold Hort16A kiwifruit in Northland. Hort16A gold had the highest production figures from the total of 421ha of kiwifruit in Northland orchards supplying Zespri last season, with 2,086,876 trays equivalent (TE) from 172ha, followed by 889,256TE of green kiwifruit from 116ha, 744,688TE of Gold 3 from 122ha, 93,717TE of the Gold 9 variety from 9ha, 4243TE of sweet green kiwifruit (Green14) from 1ha and 3983TE of the organic green variety from 1ha.
source: nzherald.co.nz
