Growing revolution fired by Psa disease

Of the 60ha of kiwifruit grown on the orchard, about two thirds are the new Gold3 variety, which is less susceptible to Psa than the Hort16A that makes up the remainder of the crop.

Somewhat controversially he believes Psa has revolutionised growing kiwifruit in New Zealand. Tacon says before Psa arrived many growers had no real idea of what they were doing. 

“Now they are forced to understand what they are trying to achieve, how the plant actually achieves it and what they need to do and how they need to do to manipulate it. It’s changed the way people grow,” he explains. 

This is a critical time of the year and Tacon spends a lot of time doing the analysis on his kiwifruit. His attention to detail is a real eye-opener, but he says unless this is done the vines will not produce the good yields of high quality fruit. This includes getting the thinning of flowers right, his target being 63 flowers per square metre.

“At this time of the year, we need to have all our thinning and canopy work finished so that the only vegetative growth that you are carrying into flowering is what you need. It’s to get the right number of flowers that are going to be pollinated and carry fruit,” he explains. 

“There is no point in taking these off later. The aim is to have enough flowers to meet our production targets.” 

Tacon says uniformity is needed right throughout the orchard and supervising workers to meet the rigorous standards that he sets.

“If everything is uniform, everything happens at the same time and this means we have the biggest impact, we hit our targets and produce a good crop at the end. 

“In the kiwifruit industry we work on trays per hectare. For the Hort16A, I’m targeting about 17,000 trays per hectare. Because Gold3 is a more prolific cropper, from the same number of flowers (63 per square metre), I am looking at 20,000 trays and of course it is also a larger fruit,” he adds.

Tacon says since he’s been in the industry he has seen a huge change in the relationship between Zespri and growers and says it meets the needs of the consumer. 

Zespri, he adds, knows what the market wants and say it’s up to orchardists to produce a great tasting fruit that the consumer enjoys and wants to keep coming back for more. 

Tacon believes that other primary sector groups could learn a lesson from the way kiwifruit growers and marketers work hand-in-hand to deliver a quality product to the consumer.