HortNZ Board Election 2025: Growers urged to vote before 10 July deadline
Commercial fruit and vegetable growers are being encouraged to cast their votes in the Horticulture New Zealand (HortNZ) board directors' election.
The Plant & Food Research team that took on Psa-V disease and won have received a prize worth $500,000.
The team, led by Dr Bruce Campbell, were awarded the Prime Minister’s top science prize at an event at Parliament on Tuesday.
Plant & Food Research says the prize money will be invested in developing the next generation of science technologies to protect plants against biosecurity threats and to develop New Zealand as a hub for bioprotection technologies.
Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman congratulated the team and says he looks forward to seeing what they do next.
"When Psa was discovered at a Te Puke orchard in 2010, that could have meant the end of the kiwifruit industry," Chapman says.
"The Plant & Food Research team got their experts on the ground in the Bay of Plenty and the result was the new gold kiwifruit cultivar now sold around the world as Zespri SunGold Kiwifruit."
Forty-eight million trays of SunGold were sold last season, with an export value of $686 million - up 70% on the previous year and increasing by about 10 million trays a year.
"Plant & Food Research stood behind the kiwifruit industry in one of its darkest hours, when Psa was at its worst,” Chapman says.
“The only way forward for the kiwifruit industry was through new varieties that were more Psa tolerant and through new orchard husbandry, and Plant & Food were at the forefront in providing this support,”
“It is not too much to say that without their work, it would be a very different industry today.”
"The worst of the worst" is how Richard Kempthorne, the chair of the Nelson Tasman Rural Support Trust, describes the cumulative effects of the two storms that have wreaked havoc across the top of the South Island.
The basis for making great cheese is good milk, says the owner of Banks Peninsula's Barry's Bay Cheese, which was named Champion of Champons Mid-Size, for its traditional Aged Gouda, at this year's NZ Champions of Cheese Awards.
The 2024 Ahuwhenua Young Māori Farmer of the Year, Ben Purua has been named farmer-backed charity Meet the Need's first official ambassador.
Global dairy prices have ended a two-month run of losses.
The world's largest dairy company may be in pole position to acquire Fonterra's Australian assets.
In a major win for farmers, the Government has directed regional councils to halt all work on plans and regional policy statement reviews under the Resource Management Act (RMA).
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