How a $1 billion gold kiwi breed saved New Zealand's industry
We visited New Zealand to see how it grows, picks, ships, and breeds its most prized kiwifruit.
Transcript
00:00New Zealand is the world's largest exporter of kiwifruit.
00:06The country shipped out over $1.5 billion worth of them in 2023.
00:12This fruit is very special here in New Zealand.
00:17But a little over a decade ago, a deadly plant disease almost took this industry out.
00:22We had to pull the whole plant out and basically start from scratch again.
00:26What saved the day was a lab-bred variety called sun gold.
00:31It became so popular that last year on average, orchards made a third more on sun golds than
00:36greens.
00:37But not every grower could get in on the action.
00:40Licenses are expensive, and raising the gold kiwifruit has gotten harder.
00:44We had hail, we've had floods, we've had cyclones, you name it, and one year we got it.
00:49So 2023 was an awful year.
00:52So how did one fruit save a whole industry, and what does it take to breed the perfect
00:56kiwi?
01:02Kiwifruit originated in what is now China, and came in a rainbow of colors.
01:06In 1904, a school principal brought some seeds back to New Zealand.
01:10The fruit were soon called Chinese gooseberries.
01:13As production took off, New Zealand producers rebranded the fruit after the country's national
01:18bird, because of its similar fuzzy brown exterior.
01:22That's why here it's called kiwifruit, because the bird and the people are also kiwis.
01:27The green variety of the fruit became the most recognizable abroad, but New Zealand
01:31ships out green, gold, and red varieties to customers around the globe.
01:38Around 80% of New Zealand's kiwifruit comes from the Bay of Plenty.
01:43There are over 11,000 hectares of orchards in the area, and tens of thousands of people
01:51come to New Zealand on visas to work in the industry for half the year.
01:57They pick the fruit from March to June, when it's starting to ripen, but still firm.
02:01We have to come here to earn money to help our family back in Vanuatu.
02:06Samuel Colloran and his pick team are from the Pacific island of Vanuatu.
02:11They're harvesting green kiwifruit at this orchard in Sepoki.
02:14We have a team of 18 pickers here, and they'll pick about 150 to 200 bins a day.
02:22The team gets paid per crate, and splits the earnings among themselves.
02:27We have to pick fast to get more bins, that's where we get more money.
02:32I'm experienced in this, that's why I go fast.
02:36Samuel says the best technique is to twist off the fruit, grabbing two or three at a time.
02:42His team clears a whole row, carefully plopping each fruit into a pouch, which can weigh up to 55 pounds.
02:50We go back home in the afternoon, we'll bin everywhere.
02:53When it's full, they dump it into an awaiting tractor bin.
02:56But make sure there's no stalks, no leaves in the bin, other things like no scratch on the fruits.
03:02This tractor drives the containers to the collection site outside the orchard.
03:07Next, trucks move them to packing facilities within a few hours to prevent the fruit from ripening.
03:14At the moment we have 3,000 bins on site.
03:18Michelle Bennett runs this factory.
03:20It's owned by Sika, one of the largest kiwifruit suppliers in the country.
03:24It is my first year in the industry of operations manager, but I have come through the ranks for the last 12 years.
03:31I started at that tray fruit level of putting the plastic inside a box.
03:35This facility alone is 600 people to be able to operate 24 hours a day.
03:40Sika has 11 of these packhouses across the North Island, processing over a fifth of the country's crop.
03:47This hopper tips the bins onto the production line.
03:50Workers pull out any disfigured fruit, leaves or sticks.
03:54Brushes along the line remove any dust from the orchard.
03:58And it makes it nice and shiny on the other side so that the graders can see a lot more.
04:04First, this camera takes 150 pictures of every single one as they pass.
04:09So the orange and the green have identified a mark on the fruit.
04:13It will then be kicked off to one of our grading tables.
04:16And a human will look at the defect and make the judgment call.
04:22Then the fruit goes through a series of sorters.
04:24The lines send the fruit to the reject bin if it has any blemishes like this.
04:29This happens when two kiwifruit rub against each other in the orchard.
04:32They don't look so nice, but there's nothing wrong with the inside of the fruit.
04:36So that can be then processed out into beauty products, into juices, into ice cream.
04:41Sungold kiwifruit brews easily because of its thinner skin.
04:45Pretty much a pillow princess.
04:47We designed the machine to make sure that there's no drop of any more than a quarter of a kilo of fruit.
04:55To make sure that there's no drop of any more than about 10 centimeters.
05:01A piece of plastic or sheet or a brush buffers any fall.
05:05If the fruit has a tiny blemish or is slightly too big or too small, it'll be sold on the domestic market.
05:11International consumers get those perfect looking ones.
05:15New Zealand produces over 650,000 tons of kiwifruit a year.
05:20And over 90% of it is exported.
05:25Every packhouse hoping to export outside New Zealand and Australia transfers the fruit to Zespri.
05:30The only company in New Zealand allowed to market and advertise kiwifruit elsewhere.
05:36It's what's called a single desk marketer.
05:38And it was established in 1997 to standardize quality and negotiate prices on the global market.
05:45This machine carefully puts on a sticker with the Zespri logo.
05:52Then workers close up the boxes and stack them.
05:56This robot secures every stack with plastic ties.
06:00We pre-cool the product for 12 hours to bring it from ambient temperature down to a cooler 5, 8 degrees.
06:07Kiwifruit does not like to be frozen.
06:11Cooling slows maturation so Sika can store the pallets before they're shipped.
06:15Sometimes the fruit sits here for up to eight months.
06:18Zespri expects this to be a record year for exports.
06:21It's a good season. We've packed double of what we normally pack by this time of year.
06:30But having a good year has gotten harder.
06:33In 2010, a kiwifruit-killing disease called PSA was first detected in New Zealand.
06:39It's not toxic to humans, but it blocks the plant's vascular tissue as it spreads inside the vine.
06:45The leaves start getting spots, new shoots die off, and the vines develop cankers that seep red or white sap.
06:52The whole plant can die in about six weeks.
06:55And because all the orchards here are side-by-side, PSA spread rapidly, affecting both green and gold varieties.
07:03It decimated the industry here in the Bay of Plenty.
07:07PSA has cost the industry over half a billion dollars in losses since 2010.
07:13We had to pull the whole plant out and basically start from scratch again.
07:17So our production and volumes were down for probably about three to four years to recover.
07:23At the time, a gold kiwifruit called Hort 16A dominated the market.
07:2916A was highly susceptible to it. It's a devastating effect.
07:34And it probably would have meant the death of the industry had it not been for this guy, Russell Lowe.
07:40He already had hundreds of potential varieties in his breeding program at the Plant and Food Research Institute in Sepoke.
07:46And luckily, one of them showed resistance.
07:49I made the crosses, which led to our selection gold three, which is sun gold.
07:56Not only could they withstand PSA, but they could also kill it.
08:01Not only could they withstand PSA, but sun gold were also sweeter, had thinner skins, and grew quicker.
08:08And it's now a billion-dollar industry for New Zealand. So that's not too bad.
08:15Do you get a nice little cut of that?
08:17No. It's just a plaque to put on the wall.
08:20Some people would say it was luck, but I think it underlies the necessity with breeding to keep breeding.
08:32Today, scientists at the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre are picking up where Russell left off when he retired,
08:37breeding thousands of new seedlings every year.
08:41So we take a male and we take a female that may have attributes that we want.
08:46We cross them and try and find the children that have both of those attributes together.
08:51They grow the babies in orchards like these.
08:55But even if the new varieties have the traits scientists hope for, they also have to produce fruit consumers will actually buy.
09:02If the growers can't make money out of a kiwifruit, then that's not going to work.
09:12Sun gold has been a massive commercial success.
09:16It's overtaken green as New Zealand's most popular variety,
09:19and now makes up more than half of the country's kiwifruit exports.
09:23We're predominantly gold now. Green is sort of heading into the sunset a little bit.
09:27It hasn't been very profitable.
09:31Overseas, Zespri can sell them for a premium compared to greens.
09:36At this Florida Costco in July, golds were going for $3 more.
09:41And in 2023, New Zealand growers made three times more from sun golds on average.
09:47China is Zespri's biggest customer, followed by Japan, Spain and Portugal.
09:51The U.S. doesn't eat as much sun gold, so it's a growth market for Zespri.
09:59But growers can't easily get their hands on sun gold.
10:03Zespri owns the variety and auctions off a limited number of licenses a year.
10:08In 2023, it sold only 350 hectares worth.
10:12That's how it controls the supply of the fruit and keeps the price high in the global market.
10:16The price of the licenses has got quite high.
10:19Chris Jensen is a third-generation kiwifruit farmer for Sika.
10:23Chris has 22 hectares of green, but he's only been able to purchase two hectares of sun gold.
10:28And he paid nearly $745,000 for it.
10:33Green growers probably haven't been making enough money over the last few years
10:37to actually fund buying gold licenses.
10:44That's because they've taken a number of hits.
10:47During the pandemic, the industry lost about half of its seasonal workforce to border closures,
10:52driving up labor costs.
10:55And then there are the increasingly extreme weather events.
10:59In 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle pummeled producers.
11:03The floodwaters caused vine damage.
11:06We lost 100,000 trays, so financially it was quite a big blow.
11:10That's about $400,000 in losses.
11:14Last year, Zespri sold 19 million fewer trays of kiwifruit than the season before.
11:19Luckily, this year is looking better.
11:22I think it's going to be an above-average year.
11:30But as the climate down under gets more volatile, how is the industry preparing for the future?
11:35Well, it starts with management at the grove.
11:38And because sun gold kiwifruit has weak roots, it requires specific care.
11:44If we were to plant gold straight into the ground, it wouldn't be so good
11:47because the root system for gold isn't very good.
11:51Matt Stewart manages this orchard for Sika.
11:54Like all kiwifruit growers, he uses a technique called grafting.
11:58He takes a strong rootstock from a green variety and tapes a sun gold vine on top.
12:04He just has to make sure to line up the tissue behind the bark that carries nutrients up and down the plant.
12:09If they interlock, it should sink up and heal.
12:12He trains the baby branches to grow along these strings so they don't tangle on themselves.
12:17There's one male row for every row of female vines.
12:20That gives bees and other insects enough male flowers to pollinate the female ones, which develop fruit.
12:27Matt prunes the male branches to make sure they don't overtake the fruit-producing females.
12:32Another challenge is wind breaking off branches, opening a wound for PSA to seep in.
12:38So growers plant pines between orchards and place white tarps between rows to act as wind barriers.
12:44Pesticides and protective sprays also help.
12:47This just gives us a fighting chance.
12:55Once there's some fruit, growers send it to this lab for testing, to make sure the crop is maturing.
13:01So if the fruit is going too soft, it's showing that it's maturing too much.
13:06This test makes sure it's developing color at the right time.
13:10You want gold kiwifruit to be gold.
13:12This pressure machine tests for firmness.
13:15If a fruit is ripening too fast or it's too soft, it can cause issues trying to pick the fruit.
13:21They also take a sample of juice to test sugar content.
13:24And at this station, they're making sure the seeds turn from white to black, a sign they're ripening correctly.
13:30The rest are either chocolate brown or black, so that's a pass.
13:33If you had three non-black, so white or light brown or a reddy color, then it's a fail.
13:40Finally, they run a dry matter test.
13:44They take a slice of kiwi, weigh it wet,
13:49and then dry it out for a day in this room before weighing it again.
13:54The difference in weight is the dry matter.
13:58It relates to taste. The higher the dry matter, the sweeter the fruit is.
14:01And the more valuable it usually is.
14:04Growers use all this information to decide when to harvest their fruit.
14:14Good orchard care is essential, but it's not enough to eliminate the risk of disease.
14:20Growers also need crop variety.
14:23That's been proven with other fruits around the world.
14:27Our global banana industry is built on just one kind, called the Cavendish.
14:32People love it because it's yummy, it looks nice, and it ripens during travel.
14:37But the Cavendish doesn't have any seeds, so it can't naturally reproduce.
14:42Because each one is a genetic clone, Cavendish are really susceptible to disease.
14:57Which is exactly what's happening.
15:00A fungus called Panama disease is ravaging crops,
15:03putting the world's most popular banana at risk of extinction.
15:10Here in Colombia, quarantine zones and biosecurity measures have contained the disease in some farms.
15:17But scientists are hustling to try and naturally breed a Cavendish variety that's resistant to Panama disease.
15:24And they hope global consumers will take a chance on the diverse range of bananas that already exists.
15:30We have red bananas, pink bananas. Why not try to incorporate that into the market?
15:36There are hundreds of different banana varieties around the world.
15:40A friend of mine collected one up in Papua New Guinea that he said,
15:43if you didn't know it, you'd think you were eating a strawberry.
15:47Kiwifruit aren't facing as dire challenges as bananas.
15:52But just like those other researchers, scientists at the Kiwifruit Breeding Center know that breeding
15:57can give them a fighting chance against the climate crisis.
16:01That's why it's so important that scientists like Russell have kept naturally breeding kiwifruit,
16:06even after creating the miracle sun gold.
16:09Look at it as breeding as a continuous process.
16:12Look at it as breeding as a continuous process.
16:15Don't think, we've made it, we can stop now.
16:19Since sun gold, Russell and his team have developed an even sweeter kiwifruit called Ruby Red.
16:24It has PSA resistance, and it's seen strong demand abroad,
16:28with sales expected to hit a million trays this season.
16:31The middle part has got a sort of a sweet berry taste.
16:36As temperatures in this area could increase more than a whole degree Fahrenheit by 2050,
16:41they're choosing to mate parents that can handle warmer winters and droughts.
16:45We've got to breed the next generation of kiwifruit that can survive in those sorts of temperatures,
16:51humidities, the different pests that then come with those different temperatures and humidities.
16:57But naturally breeding is slow-moving work.
17:00It takes about 20, 25 years to go from having an idea of what we want in a kiwifruit
17:05to actually producing that kiwifruit. It's a very long time.
17:09They're hoping new tech, like DNA testing, will speed up the breeding process.
17:14We could find a gene marker that allows us to understand if at the seedling stage,
17:20a plant will have the attribute that we want or not.
17:23So hopefully when the next generation of diseases and storms does come,
17:27they'll have a strong enough kiwifruit at the ready.
17:30You have good years and bad years, and the horticultural kiwifruit industry is quite resilient.
17:35Growers know how to get through hard times and continue on.
17:46They're as bad as the people that want a black rose.