Australia wants first bite of new fruit

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agriculture editor

An Australian company has gazumped New Zealand apple and pear growers' bid to cover the running costs of HortResearch's world-leading pipfruit breeding programme.

Horticulture Australia's bid of $1.2 million a year - twice that of Pipfruit Growers NZ - could end exclusive access for NZ growers to new varieties vital to their future.

PGNZ chairman Phil Alison said the Australian offer - a response to a tender put up by HortResearch - had "started a new ballgame" in negotiations between his organisation and HortResearch.

Horticulture Australia, funded by Australian industry, researchers and government, has activities ranging over strategic planning, export promotion and product development.

But Australia has nothing to match NZ's 20-year-old pipfruit breeding programme which, funded by about $20 million of grower and taxpayer money, has produced such apples as Pacific Rose and Jazz to keep the $500 million industry ahead of international competitors.

But hard-up HortResearch says it cannot continue to fund the programme and make its required return on investment.

HortResearch chief executive Paul McGilvary said he was "resisting" the Australian offer in hopes an all-NZ bid could be negotiated.

"We want to do it out of New Zealand if we possibly can."

If not, he said, "we would rather fund it from Australia than see all that value lost to New Zealand because we would never replace it."

HortResearch and the Government was "absolutely determined" not to lose the capability and to extract value from it for NZ.

The programme itself was not up for sale. "All we are talking about doing is selling options to some of the varieties out of that programme."

Horticulture Australia funding would give it access to some varieties "but, as we've said all the way along, New Zealand would control it and all of the varieties from the programme would be made available to New Zealand growers as of right on a commercial basis," McGilvary said.

Climatic conditions and "first-mover advantages" for NZ growers would benefit them even if Australians were involved, he said.

Some of the programme's plant varieties would simply not be suitable for Australia,

But, if NZ wanted exclusive rights, growers needed to put their money where their mouths were.

"They say constantly that they really value this programme, that it is very important to them, that it is critical to their future. The industry has to say it is important enough for [it] to pay for it."

But Alison said the industry had put in an enormous sum over a significant period. Times had changed and it would not put up such funding again without certainty of outcome.

"At the moment, HortResearch has all those outcomes," he said.

"Part of our problem is we've put money in for 20 years and we've got no ownership of it. It's a little bit blase to say that you guys have got no say in this and there is no moral relationship."

But growers also recognised that HortResearch was the pipfruit industry's biggest science provider and a lot of new science was built around the programme.

Last week's PGNZ annual meeting had endorsed continuing negotiations with HortResearch, Alison said, and growers were prepared to consider increasing their levy to fund the programme.

A new offer would depend on further analysis and re-assessment of the programme.