New-style kiwifruit peels like a banana

A KIWIFRUIT with a furry cream skin which peels like a banana is among new varieties under development in a ground-breaking programme.
Another has striking red flesh. A 'sports kiwifruit' is planned to give athletes a natural vitamin boost.
These are among a range of new cultivars being developed which promise to offer new taste sensations, specific nutritional benefits, keeping qualities and appearances. But it may be some time before they appear on supermarket shelves.

Every year $20 million is invested in research and development with 50,000 potential cultivars currently under evaluation and four new varieties, three of them gold and one green, are in the final stages before a potential commercial release.
Zespri and Plant & Food Research, based at Te Puke, are also  developing a superior large red fruit with the taste and keeping qualities the market demands. A further 47 new cultivars with promising attributes are being evaluated in smaller trials around New Zealand.
However, one early and two long-life gold varieties and an earlier, sweeter green kiwifruit are now growing in pre-commercial trials  and may be released to orchardists by 2011.
They have scientists, growers and marketers excited, and so does the further potential to be unlocked in the kiwifruit Actinidia family.
Scientist Alan Seal, who was closely involved with the development of  gold kiwifruit said the genus offered possibilities for fruit ranging from not much bigger than a strawberry to apple size and with a variety of flesh colours, taste and nutritional attributes.
"The easy peel fruit looks great and has about 10 times more vitamin C than Hayward kiwifruit, which already has more Vitamin C than citrus.
"However, the flesh is bland tasting so we need to work on its flavour before it becomes a commercial possibility," he said.
Any new fruit which emerge from the breeding programme can be protected with Plant Variety Rights, (the plant equivalent of a patent) so secrecy and security surrounding their research and development is paramount.
 
Fruit the size of strawberries or grapes are another possibility as is a kiwifruit with the sweetness of gold and the tang of green, or a kiwifruit which tastes like a pineapple. Whatever their attributes, all will be developed using traditional plant breeding techniques of pollination and germination, not genetic modification.
 Dr Seal said the cultivars need to meet very high standards before they become a viable commercial fruit.
 
The partnership between Zespri and Plant & Food Research meant scientists knew what attributes they were searching for, Plant & Food Research scientist Luis Gea said.
"With so many cultivars it is a bit like looking for needles in the haystack but we  know what we are looking for," he said.
Those 'needles' are specific attribute combinations dictated by Zespri which include characteristics such as high yield, early harvest, outstanding flavour, long storage and shelf life and attractive appearance.
Paengaroa  grower Stuart Steel said  he's not disappointed that varieties soon to be released are once again green and gold.