TAURANGA - Two field days have been held to advise kiwifruit growers in the Te Puke and Katikati districts on how to recover from frosts that have devastated their crops.
The orchardists were told how to organise their finances around their losses, ways of boosting returns from undamaged parts of orchards,
and whether more extensive protection is needed.
At least one orchardist is understood to have suffered a total crop loss, while others are talking losses of between 2 per cent and 15 per cent.
About 300 claims are expected on Kiwifruit NZ's frost and hail insurance.
Successful insurance claimants will receive $2 a tray for losses of conventional kiwifruit and $3 a tray for the new Kiwi Gold - a sum aimed at covering their costs rather than indemnifying profits and well below the forecast grower return of more than $7 a tray.
Kiwifruit NZ chairman Doug Voss said the impact had been serious for a number of individual growers, mainly in low-lying areas.
But a bumper crop was still expected for the next selling season.
Recent research has shown that a winter chill in orchards is crucial to bloom numbers and times of kiwifruit flowering, which in turn determine crop size.
Last year's spasmodic, late and light flowering in many kiwifruit orchards was the result of not enough chilling.
Studies have shown that kiwifruit need 600 hours of winter temperatures less than 7 deg C. It did not seem to matter when the chill hours occurred, although if frosts occurred once vines budded up, the vines could be damaged.
The frosts struck in two three-day periods in September.
The two grower field days last week were conducted by horticulture consultants, financial advisers and insurers.
The first was held on the Paengaroa property of growers Colin and Lorraine Beaumont; the second, on the Te Puna property of Murray and Ruth Miers.
Mr Beaumont said he was unaware of any growers left in a desperate situation, despite some individual heavy losses - including about six of the insurance claimants, who were looking at negligible income from their orchards this season.
But the buds were already starting to recover and, in the absence of any more frosts, would produce good cane for the next growing season, he said.
The frosts had been a "glitch in the scheme of things."
In his own case, up to 70 per cent of potential green kiwifruit had been destroyed, reducing volumes from 40,000 trays to less than 20,000.
- NZPA
TAURANGA - Two field days have been held to advise kiwifruit growers in the Te Puke and Katikati districts on how to recover from frosts that have devastated their crops.
The orchardists were told how to organise their finances around their losses, ways of boosting returns from undamaged parts of orchards,
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