Narrator: New Zealand is the world's largest exporter of kiwifruit. The country shipped out over $1.5 billion worth of them in 2023. This fruit is very special here in New Zealand. Narrator: But a little over a decade ago, a deadly plant disease almost took this industry out. We had to pull the whole plant out and basically start from scratch again. Narrator: What saved the day was a lab-bred variety called SunGold. It became so popular that last year, on average, orchards made a third more on SunGolds than greens. But not every grower could get in on the action. Licenses are expensive, and raising the gold kiwifruit has gotten harder. We've had hail, we've had floods, we've had cyclones. You name it, in one year, we got it. So 2023 was an awful year. Narrator: So how did one fruit save a whole industry?

And what does it take to breed the perfect kiwi? Kiwifruit originated in what is now China and came in a rainbow of colors. In 1904, a school principal brought some seeds back to New Zealand. The fruit were soon called Chinese gooseberries. As production took off, New Zealand producers rebranded the fruit after the country's national bird because of its similar fuzzy, brown exterior. That's why here it's called kiwifruit, because the bird and the people are also Kiwis. The green variety of the fruit became the most recognizable abroad. But New Zealand ships out green, gold, and red varieties to customers around the globe. Around 80% of New Zealand's kiwifruit comes from the Bay of Plenty. There are over 11,000 hectares of orchards in the area. And tens of thousands of people come to New Zealand on visas to work in the industry for half the year.

They pick the fruit from March to June when it's starting to ripen but still firm. We have to come here to earn money to help our family back in Vanuatu. Narrator: Samuel Kaloran and his pick team are from the Pacific island of Vanuatu. They're harvesting green kiwifruit at this orchard in Te Puke. We have a team of 18 pickers here, and they'll pick about 150 to 200 bins a day. Narrator: The team gets paid per crate and splits the earnings among themselves. Must pick fast to get more bins. That's where we get more money. I'm experienced in this. That's why I go fast. Narrator: Samuel says the best technique is to twist off the fruit, grabbing two or three at a time. His team clears a whole row, carefully plopping each fruit into a pouch, which can weigh up to 55 pounds.

We go back home in the afternoon. We feel pain everywhere. Narrator: When it's full, they dump it into an awaiting tractor bin. But make sure there's no stalks, no leaves in the bin, and other things, like no scratches on the fruit. Narrator: This tractor drives the containers to the collection site outside the orchard. Next, trucks move them to packing facilities within a few hours to prevent the fruit from ripening. At the moment, we have 3,000 bins on site. Narrator: Michelle Bennett runs this factory. It's owned by Seeka, one of the largest kiwifruit suppliers in the country. Michelle: It is my first year in the industry as operations manager, but I have come through the ranks for the last 12 years. I started at that tray prep level, of putting the plastic inside a box. So, this facility alone is 600 people to be able to operate 24 hours a day.

Narrator: Seeka has 11 of these packhouses across the North Island, processing over a fifth of the country's crop. This hopper tips the bins onto the production line. Workers pull out any disfigured fruit, leaves, or sticks. Brushes along the line remove any dust from the orchard. Michelle: And it makes it nice and shiny on the other side so that the graders can see a lot more defects. Narrator: First, this camera takes 150 pictures of every single one as they pass. Michelle: So the orange and the green have identified a mark on the fruit. It will then be picked off to one of our grading tables, and a human will look at the defect and make the judgment call. Narrator: Then the fruit goes through a series of sorters. The lines send the fruit to the reject bin if it has any blemishes like this. This happens when two kiwifruit

rub against each other in the orchard. Michelle: They don't look so nice, but there's nothing wrong with the inside of the fruit. So that can be then processed out into beauty products, into juices, into ice cream. Narrator: SunGold kiwifruit bruise easily because of its thinner skin. Narrator: A piece of plastic or a sheet or a brush buffers any fall. If the fruit has a tiny blemish or is slightly too big or too small, it'll be sold on the domestic market. International consumers get those perfect-looking ones. New Zealand produces over 650,000 tons of kiwifruit a year. And over 90% of it is exported. Every packhouse hoping to export outside New Zealand and Australia transfers the fruit to Zespri, the only company in New Zealand allowed to market and advertise kiwifruit elsewhere. It's what's called a single-desk marketer.

and it was established in 1997 to standardize quality and negotiate prices on the global market. This machine carefully puts on a sticker with the Zespri logo. Then workers close up the boxes and stack them. This robot secures every stack with plastic ties. We precool the product for 12 hours to bring it from ambient temperature down to a cooler 5, 8 degrees. Kiwifruit does not like to be frozen. Narrator: Cooling slows maturation, so Seeka can store the pallets before they're shipped. Sometimes the fruit sits here for up to eight months. Zespri expects this to be a record year for exports. It's a good season. We've packed double of what we normally pack by this time of year. Narrator: But having a good year has gotten harder. In 2010, a kiwifruit-killing disease called PSA was first detected in New Zealand. It's not toxic to humans,

but it blocks the plant's vascular tissue as it spreads inside the vine. The leaves start getting spots, new shoots die off, and the vines develop cankers that seep red or white sap. A whole plant can die in about six weeks. And because all the orchards here are side by side, PSA is spread rapidly, affecting both green and gold varieties. It decimated the industry here in the Bay of Plenty. Narrator: PSA has cost the industry over half a billion dollars in losses since 2010. We had to pull the whole plant out and basically start from scratch again. So our production and volumes were down for probably about three to four years to recover. Narrator: At the time, a gold kiwifruit called Hort16A dominated the market. 16A was highly susceptible to it. It's a devastating effect. Narrator: And it probably would've meant the death of the industry had it not been for this guy, Russell Lowe.

He already had hundreds of potential varieties in his breeding program at the Plant and Food Research Institute in Te Puke, and luckily, one of them showed resistance. I made the crosses, which led to our selection Gold3, which is SunGold. Narrator: Not only could they withstand PSA, but SunGolds were also sweeter, had thinner skins, and grew quicker. And it's now a billion-dollar industry for New Zealand, so that's not too bad. Producer: Do you get a nice little cut of that? No, just a plaque to put on the wall. Some people would say it was luck. But I think it underlies the necessity with breeding to keep breeding. Narrator: Today, scientists at the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre are picking up where Russell left off when he retired, breeding thousands of new seedlings every year. Matt: So we take a male, and we take a female that may have attributes that we want.

We cross them and try to find the children that have both of those attributes together. Narrator: They grow the babies in orchards like these. But even if the new varieties have the traits scientists hope for, they also have to produce fruit consumers will actually buy. If the growers can't make money out of a kiwifruit, then that's not going to work. Narrator: SunGold has been a massive commercial success. It's overtaken green as New Zealand's most popular variety. It now makes up more than half of the country's kiwifruit exports. Michael: We're predominantly gold now. Green is heading into the sunset a little bit. It hasn't been very profitable. Narrator: Overseas, Zespri can sell them for a premium compared to greens. At this Florida Costco in July, golds were going for $3 more. And in 2023, New Zealand growers made three times more from SunGolds on average.

China is Zespri's biggest customer, followed by Japan, Spain, and Portugal. The US doesn't eat as much SunGold, so it's a growth market for Zespri. But growers can't easily get their hands on SunGold. Zespri owns the variety and auctions off a limited number of licenses a year. In 2023, it sold only 350 hectares' worth. That's how it controls the supply of the fruit and keeps the price high on the global market. The price of the licenses has got quite high. Narrator: Chris Jensen is a third-generation kiwifruit farmer for Seeka. Chris has 22 hectares of green, but he's only been able to purchase two hectares of SunGold, and he paid nearly $745,000 for it. Green growers probably haven't been making enough money over the last few years to actually fund buying gold licenses. Narrator: That's because they've taken a number of hits.

During the pandemic, the industry lost about half of its seasonal workforce to border closures, driving up labor costs. And then there are the increasingly extreme weather events. In 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle pummeled producers. The floodwaters caused vine damage. Chris: We lost 100,000 trays. So financially, it was quite a big blow. Narrator: That's about $400,000 in losses. Last year, Zespri sold 19 million fewer trays of kiwifruit than the season before. Luckily, this year is looking better. I think it's going to be an above-average year. Narrator: But as the climate down under gets more volatile, how is the industry preparing for the future? Well, it starts with management at the grove. And because SunGold kiwifruit has weak roots, it requires specific care. If we were to plant gold straight into the ground, it wouldn't be so good, because the root system for gold isn't very good.

Narrator: Matt Stewart manages this orchard for Seeka. Like all kiwifruit growers, he uses a technique called grafting. He takes a strong root stock from a green variety and tapes a SunGold vine on top. He just has to make sure to line up the tissue behind the bark that carries nutrients up and down the plant. Matthew: If they interlock, it should sync up and heal. Narrator: He trains the baby branches to grow along these strings so they don't tangle on themselves. There's one male row for every row of female vines. That gives bees and other insects enough male flowers to pollinate the female ones, which develop fruit. Matt prunes the male branches to make sure they don't overtake the fruit-producing females. Another challenge is wind breaking off branches, opening a wound for PSA to seep in. So growers plant pines between orchards and place white tarps between rows.

to act as wind barriers. Pesticides and protective sprays also help. This just gives us a fighting chance. Narrator: Once there's some fruit, growers send it to this lab for testing to make sure the crop is maturing. So, if the fruit are going too soft, it's showing that it's maturing too much. Narrator: This test? Make sure it's developing color at the right time. Dana: You want gold kiwifruit to be gold. Narrator: This pressure machine tests for firmness. If a fruit is ripening too fast or it's too soft, it can cause issues trying to pick the fruit. They also take a sample of juice to test sugar content. And at this station, they're making sure the seeds turn from white to black, a sign they're ripening correctly. The rest are either chocolate brown or black, so that's a pass. If you had three non-black, so white or light brown or a red color, then it's a fail.

Narrator: Finally, they run a dry matter test. They take a slice of kiwi, weigh it wet, and then dry it out for a day in this room before weighing it again. The difference in weight is the dry matter. Dana: Correlates to taste. The higher the dry matter, the sweeter the fruit is. Narrator: And the more valuable it usually is. Growers use all this information to decide when to harvest their fruit. Good orchard care is essential, but it's not enough to eliminate the risk of disease. Growers also need crop variety. That's been proven with other fruits around the world. Our global banana industry is built on just one kind, called the Cavendish. People love it because it's yummy, it looks nice, and it ripens during travel. But the Cavendish doesn't have any seeds, so it can't naturally reproduce. Because each one is a genetic clone,

Cavendish are really susceptible to disease. Fernando: The domino effect. If you have everything wrong with just one clone, one disease can kill everything, plant by plant. One disease can kill everything, plant by plant. Narrator: Which is exactly what's happening. A fungus called Panama disease is ravaging crops, putting the world's most popular banana at risk of extinction. Here in Colombia, quarantine zones and biosecurity measures have contained the disease in some farms. But scientists are hustling to try and naturally breed a Cavendish variety that's resistant to Panama disease. And they hope global consumers will take a chance on the diverse range of bananas that already exists. Fernando: We have red bananas, pink bananas. Why not try to incorporate that into the market? James: There are hundreds of different banana varieties around the world. A friend of mine collected one up in Papua New Guinea that he said, if you didn't know, you'd think you were eating a strawberry.

Narrator: Kiwifruit aren't facing as dire challenges as bananas. But just like those other researchers, scientists at the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre know that breeding can give them a fighting chance against the climate crisis. That's why it's so important that scientists like Russell have kept naturally breeding kiwifruit even after creating the miracle SunGold. Look at breeding as a continuous process. Don't think we've made it; we can stop now. Narrator: Since SunGold, Russell and his team have developed an even sweeter kiwifruit called RubyRed. It has PSA resistance, and it's seen strong demand abroad, with sales expected to hit a million trays this season. The middle part has got a sort of a sweet berry taste. Narrator: As temperatures in this area could increase more than a whole degree Fahrenheit by 2050, they're choosing to make parents that can handle warmer winters and droughts.

Matt: We've got to breed the next generation of kiwifruit that can survive in those sorts of temperatures, humidities, the different pests that then come in those different temperatures and humidities. Narrator: But naturally breeding is slow-moving work. Matt: It takes about 20, 25 years to go from having an idea of what we want in a kiwifruit to actually producing that kiwifruit. It's a very long time. Narrator: They're hoping new tech, like DNA testing, will speed up the breeding process. Matt: We could find a gene marker that allows us to understand if at the seedling stage a plant will have the attribute that we want or not. Narrator: So hopefully when the next generation of diseases and storms does come, they'll have a strong-enough kiwifruit at the ready. Chris: You have good years and bad years, and the horticultural or kiwifruit industry is quite resilient.

Growers know how to get through hard times and continue on. Producer: Can I put in a request for a blue kiwi? You're as bad as the people that want a black rose.

How Kiwis Are Bred To Perfection In New Zealand | Big Business | Business Insider

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How Kiwis Are Bred To Perfection In New Zealand | Big Business | Business Insider

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