Orchard owner Brydon Nisbet (left) with Plant & Food scientist Dr Jim Walker and Danielle Adsett of NZ Apple & Pears in Puketapu. Photo / Warren Buckland
Orchard owner Brydon Nisbet (left) with Plant & Food scientist Dr Jim Walker and Danielle Adsett of NZ Apple & Pears in Puketapu. Photo / Warren Buckland
Experts fear Cyclone Gabrielle will kill Hawke’s Bay fruit trees for years to come.
Silt and water damage is predicted to cause widespread root disease, which could mean hundreds of hectares of trees salvaged from February’s flooding will have to be felled anyway.
Scientists from Plant & Food Research areworking in conjunction with New Zealand Apples & Pears and local growers to ascertain the likelihood of root damage and potential mitigation for an industry already struggling to bounce back from the cyclone.
“This is likely the tip of the iceberg, in terms of what we see in tree deaths in the next three to five years,” Apples & Pears flood relief lead Danielle Adsett said.
A flood damaged Moteo Pa Road orchard in Puketapu. Photo / Warren Buckland
Dr Jim Walker, of Plant & Food, said the immediate priority was ensuring Hawke’s Bay growers could at least salvage enough trees for some kind of harvest in 2024.
“We won’t have a future if we don’t have cash flow out of these existing trees,” Walker said.
Around 4000 hectares of apple orchards alone were either impacted or severely impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle.
Cleaning up from that has presented huge logistical and financial challenges for growers, who are still waiting on significant Government assistance to aid the process.
“Of the growers that have been impacted, 80 per cent are small family growers,” said Adsett.
She added that many are “largely paralysed” until the Government announces a funding package, hopefully some time in early June.
“We’ve got orchardists who’ve walked away for that reason,” said Adsett.
The critical thing is that there is money generated from next year’s harvest, and then the work can begin to try to save trees for the seasons to come.
Cyclone-related root disease is predicted to further compromise Hawke's Bay apple production. Photo / Warren Buckland
Walker said waterlogged, silt-covered blocks had cut oxygen off from trees and effectively asphyxiated them.
That will cause long-term damage, the extent of which is trying to be determined by a group of Plant & Food researchers led by Dr Stephen Trolove.
Cyclone Gabrielle’s effect on “high-value perennial crops” such as apples is almost without precedent across the world, he said.
“There’s not a lot of information in publications, or even on the internet, about what to do in flood situations like this,” Trolove said.
“It is quite uncharted territory, which is why we want to gather as much information as we can now.”
He and his team have been taking soil samples from across Hawke’s Bay looking at - among other things - the consistency of the silt and depth of the water table.
“That was saturated with a consistency of anything between soup and cheesecake, and it had turned a blue, grey colour, which means the oxygen’s gone from it,” said Trolove.
Where possible, fruit growers have been applying phosphorus acid to combat root disease, but Trolove said they were not yet in a position to say if that will work or how the trees will respond in years to come.
In the meantime, the wait continues for Government funding to get silt off blocks and to revive those trees that don’t need to be removed.
“The Government has given us an assurance that it’s going to give us options in the coming weeks, so we have to have faith in that process and we look forward to engaging with them on that process so that we have clarity and the growers have a pathway,” Adsett said.
