Big plans for Hayward variety

Bruntwood Farms director Robbie Mayston is optimistic about a new green kiwifruit cultivar but says growers need to get their head around Zespri's strategy. Photo / John Borren

Zespri hopes to revolutionise the Hayward green kiwifruit category by introducing a sweeter-tasting cultivar.

Chief executive Lain Jager told a workshop at its inaugural Kiwifruit Innovation Symposium last week: "Our brightest future is in cannibalising ourselves rather than being cannabalised by others."

Mr Jager acknowledged it was a challenging topic to discuss with green kiwifruit growers, considering Hayward was the dominant kiwifruit globally and had magnificent storage performance.

"Hayward is actually the core of our business; it is the biggest category of kiwifruit globally and the lowest risk so it doesn't sound like too bad a business," he said.

But, in terms of productivity, it yielded on average only 30 to 40tonnes a hectare, "which in fruit terms is not all that flash", and higher productivity would be a key consideration for any new variety.

"We all know gold yields are higher than Hayward yields so it is not a particularly strong yielding cultivar and productivity is overwhelmingly important. It is productivity that ultimately allows you to deliver good value to consumers and at the same time making a good living for the growers."

Research also showed it had "a relatively short eating window".

"They have told us it's too hard or too soft and brown and hairy so consumers can't tell if it's a good one or a bad one."

Economically, a new cultivar had the potential to return enormous values to growers. If the green variety in pre-commercial trials had the attributes needed for a successful Zespri cultivar, it would still be several years off commercialisation, but New Zealand had to stay ahead of its competitors, Mr Jager said.

The new cultivar breeding programme accounted for more than half of Zespri's innovation funding " with more than $20million invested by Zespri, Plant & Food Research and the government each year " and had produced the game-changing SunGold (Gold3) and Hort16A varieties, adding nearly $4billion to the NZ economy so far.

Zespri marketing and innovation general manager Carol Ward said a new cultivar would always be a brand risk, pitted against a "risk of us being too scared to innovate".

However, she said, only a few years ago "it was not clear to us that Gold3 was going to be the success that it is".

"If we get risk-averse then we may fail to see the opportunity of what new varieties can do in the orchard and marketplace."

Another crucial factor was the integration of a new kiwifruit cultivar, she said.

"There may be some markets that have Hayward the whole season through but there would be markets that would switch from Hayward to a new green for the period that the new green is available.

"The interplay with Hayward is going to become a crucial consideration for us."

But consumers wanted a sweeter green kiwifruit fruit with a deeper complexity of flavour which had all the Hayward health attributes and did not need to be ripened in the fruit bowl, she said.

Kiwifruit grower and Bruntwood Farms director Robbie Mayston said Hayward had been a stalwart of the industry for a long time but it "was really peaking out" as mass amounts of green fields were going into the ground.

He said a Zespri-licensed new green variety could limit supply and increase returns but "we would like to get our heads around their strategy".

Mr Mayston questioned the cost of cut-over and the cashflow process through that period, the pooling structure and how hectares would be released.

But he asked the audience "can we afford not to cut over this new variety?"

"I could get left behind ... and do what you have always done, or take a calculated risk and have a piece of the pie."

Meanwhile, New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers president Neil Treblico told The Land that bringing in any new cultivar and making it a commercial success were difficult.

However, the only way to grow the industry was to grow better varieties. "But when Zespri start talking about a new green variety growers are going to be a bit cautious."