Plagues, Pestilences and Diseases
Kiwifruit Disease Spreads to 20 New Zealand Orchards
November 10, 2010, 12:20 AM EST
By Chris Bourke
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- A vine disease threatening New Zealand’s NZ$1.4
billion ($1.1 billion) kiwifruit industry may have spread to as many as
20 orchards, the government said after confirming a third outbreak.
A further two North Island orchards were quarantined pending a “likely”
outcome that they are also infected with Pseudomonas syringae pv
actinidiae, David Carter, New Zealand’s biosecurity minister, said
today in a statement. Infected orchards will be sprayed tomorrow, he
said after visiting the Bay of Plenty region in northern New Zealand.
“While the preferred option of dealing with PSA is eradication, this
decision can only be made once the spread of the disease is
determined,” Carter said. “We hope to know this by Friday afternoon.”
The U.S. and Australia have stopped importing kiwifruit plant material
from New Zealand until reviews of the situation are completed. The
country is the third-biggest kiwifruit grower after China and Italy,
accounting for about 21 percent of global production, and earned about
NZ$1.4 billion from the fruit in the year ending March 31, according to
Zespri Group Ltd, the world’s biggest marketer of the fruit.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is investigating 20 New
Zealand kiwifruit orchards out of 75 that have potential symptoms,
Carter said. The infected orchards are in the Bay of Plenty area, which
produces 77 percent of New Zealand’s kiwifruit crop, Zespri said.
New Zealand until now had remained free of the disease, which was first
found in Japan more than 25 years ago and spread to Italy in the 1990s,
causing millions of dollars in damages.
“It is still too early to say how PSA arrived in New Zealand, or how
long it has been here,” said Carter. The disease, carried by airborne
spores, appears to attack under certain climatic conditions and may
have always been in the country, he said.
“We don’t know if it’s been here for 10 years or 10 days,” Peter
Ombler, president of New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc. said in an
interview. “The reality is we have got it.”