Partial victory for fruit growers

They also hope MPI will repair the relationship with the CPCNW facility in the US, a supplier of new varieties to New Zealand for 30 years. 

MPI withdrew accreditation from the facility and CPCNW in turn said it was no longer interested in exporting to NZ.

Andy McGrath, an industry member and owner of McGrath Nurseries, says the release of plant material is the first step towards rectifying the unlawful actions imposed by MPI. 

A group of orchardist and growers successfully took MPI to court over the containment action and MPI was forced to reconsider how it applied legislation.

McGrath says there is still some way to go before orchardists and nurseries will be able to return to normal commercial production. The testing and release of stonefruit plants has yet to be confirmed, and there is the issue of certain plant varieties held up in post-entry quarantine. These issues need to be resolved as quickly as possible. 

“The vast majority of stonefruit plants remain in containment and the testing plans proposed by MPI are in our view overly strict.”

They had planned to address this with MPI in a meeting late last week. 

“We recognise stonefruit have a different risk profile, but we are very optimistic that the tests will not reveal any cause for concern,” says McGrath. 

McGrath has recently returned from a visit to the CPCNW facility and says MPI’s withdrawal of accreditation essentially closed the door to innovative plant varieties that may be the future of the NZ apple and stonefruit export industry. 

McGrath believes the CPCNW facility is willing to consider reaccreditation, and made encouraging comments regarding the required process. 

A meeting between MPI and industry members to discuss the potential reaccreditation of the CPCNW facility was also scheduled for late last week. McGrath holds some hope that MPI may be able to take a reasonable approach to discussions, repair their relationship with CPCNW and set a clear plan in place towards reaccreditation.   

McGrath says MPI has confirmed that tests on all apple (Malus) plants have come back clear, with no signs of any pests or diseases detectable on the plant materials. These plants have been effectively released from containment and industry members will be able to deal with them like any other trees in their orchards or nurseries.  

The balance of stonefruit plants (Prunus) will remain in containment and be further tested during the 2018-19 summer. MPI says the testing should be complete by June 2019, but the group believes it should be possible to release more plants progressively much sooner.

MPI director of plant and pathways Pete Thomson says decisions made during this process have been based on protecting NZ and the wider horticulture industry. 

“Some of the diseases, if present, could impact significantly on our wider horticulture industry.”

Nearly 20,000 stonefruit plants require more testing over spring and summer when diseases of concern would be most evident if they were present.

During the action about 48,000 affected apple and stonefruit plants and small trees were secured at 50 sites in Hawke’s Bay, Waikato, Nelson and Central Otago. In total, 32 nurseries, importers and growers were affected.

Just over 1000 apple plants have been voluntarily destroyed by 12 owners. Twenty owners opted to destroy over 6000 stonefruit plants.

“MPI remains open to receiving requests for payment for direct and verifiable losses incurred as a result of destroyed or contained plant material,” says Thomson.

“We’ve written to all affected owners on this, and we are offering one-on-one meetings to talk through the process.”