Psa false alarm

PHEW! Kerikeri kiwifruit growers are breathing a cautious sigh of relief after a close encounter with killer disease Psa.

Their orchards - mainstays of the $35 million a year Northland kiwifruit industry - may have had "a stay of execution" after Psa was identified on one this week.

Psa - Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae - was confirmed on a Kerikeri orchard on Monday morning. It was the first sign of the disease outside the Bay of Plenty, where green and gold kiwifruit vines on more than 500 orchards have tested positive for the bacterial disease.

But Kerikeri Fruitgrowers Association chairman Rick Curtis said yesterday that further tests on other samples from the same orchard had come back with a "disease undetected" result.

"Everyone is holding their breath and waiting, hopeful the first analysis may have been a false alarm," he said.

Braden Hungerford, operations manager for Kiwifruit Vine Health, the government-industry agency managing the disease, said the vine with the confirmed test had been removed from the orchard. The disease had not been detected in other samples from that orchard.

Similarly, most samples of suspected Psa which he and other kiwifruit experts from Te Puke had taken from about five other Kerikeri orchards over the weekend had produced clear test results.

Kiwifruit Vine Health general manager John Burke said Kerikeri may get a stay of execution.

"Things are better than they looked a few days ago," he said.

"We still need final confirmation on that first test. We should get that in the next couple of days and if it comes back clear they will be out of the woods."

Mr Burke said once the clear result was recorded the priority zone his agency had imposed over about half of Kerikeri's kiwifruit orchards would be lifted.

Mr Curtis said 13 of the 15 samples gathered at the weekend had produced clear results.

"We are just beginning to breath a sigh of relief. We're reasonably comfortable we haven't got Psa up here," he said.

The disease drama had been a scary business producing a lot of worry and cost.

"It's been a real wake-up call. We will have to have a review process and remain vigilant to keep Psa out," Mr Curtis said.

The 141 kiwifruit orchards in Northland cover 469ha - 200ha producing gold kiwifruit - and earned almost $35 million last year. About 300 fulltime and 1000 seasonal jobs in the North are linked to the fruit.

Northland production represents less than 5 per cent of the New Zealand kiwifruit industry. The country has a total of 3134 orchards covering 12,824ha which earned almost $825 million last year. There are 67 packhouses serving the industry - five of them in Northland.

Kiwifruit is New Zealand's largest horticultural industry. Sole exporter Zespri had revenue of $1.5 billion in the last financial year, with $1 billion in export returns to the industry.

More than 110 million trays of kiwifruit are due to be sold this year.