뉴질랜드의 키위 산업: 승리와 도전

### 키위 산업: 위기에서 혁신으로: 키위 산업
* 🥝 뉴질랜드는 세계 최대 키위 수출국으로, **2023년에 15억 달러 이상의 키위를 선적**할 것으로 예상됩니다.
* 🌱 2010년에 치명적인 식물 질병인 PSA로 인해 업계가 거의 전멸할 뻔했지만, **실험실에서 개발한 선골드라는 품종**이 이를 구해냈습니다.
* 🌏 키위 과일은 중국에서 원산지로 1904년 뉴질랜드에 전래된 후 **국가 새인 키위를 닮은 솜털 같은 갈색 겉모습** 때문에 '키위 과일'로 이름을 바꿨습니다.
* 👨 뉴질랜드 키위 생산량의 **80% 이상이 베이 오브 플렌티에서 생산**되며, **11,000헥타르에 달하는 과수원**과 바누아투와 같은 국가에서 온 계절 노동자들이 키위를 재배합니다.
* 🏭 키위 포장 공정에는 **뉴질랜드 키위 수출을 위한 단일 데스크 마케터인 제스프리로 보내기 전에 꼼꼼한 선별, 등급 지정, 포장 작업**이 포함됩니다.
* 과학자 러셀 로우가 개발한 선골드 키위는 **전립선암 저항성과 상업적 성공**으로 **10억 달러 규모의 산업**으로 성장했습니다.
* 💰 선골드의 성공으로 그린키위를 제치고 뉴질랜드에서 가장 인기 있는 품종으로 자리 잡았으며, **2023년에는 재배자들이 선골드로 평균 3배 더 많은 수익**을 올릴 것으로 예상됩니다.
* 🌱 현재 업계는 기후 변화에 견딜 수 있는 **루비레드와 같은 새로운 품종**을 육종하는 데 주력하고 있으며, 육종에는 **20~25년이 걸리지만 DNA 테스트와 같은 새로운 기술**은 더 빠른 진전을 기대할 수 있게 해줍니다.

뉴질랜드의 키위 산업은 선골드가 도입된 후 질병과 기후 문제를 극복하고 번창했습니다.

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 A $1 Billion Gold Kiwi Breed Saved New Zealand's Industry | Big Business | Business Insider

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뉴질랜드의 키위 산업: 성공 사례

뉴질랜드는 2023년에 15억 달러 이상의 키위를 수출하는 세계 최대 키위 수출국입니다.

10년 전 치명적인 식물 질병이 키위 산업을 위협했지만, 실험실에서 육성한 선골드 품종이 업계의 판도를 바꾸어 놓았습니다.

베이 오브 플렌티 지역은 뉴질랜드 키위 생산의 주요 산지로, 바누아투에서 온 수만 명의 근로자가 수확에 기여하고 있습니다.

Seeka는 뉴질랜드에서 11개의 팩하우스를 운영하며 뉴질랜드 키위 수확량의 20% 이상을 처리하고 있습니다.

과일은 카메라와 사람이 직접 흠이 있거나 손상된 과일을 식별하고 제거하는 세심한 선별 과정을 거칩니다.

뉴질랜드 키위 과일을 전 세계에 판매하고 광고할 수 있는 유일한 회사인 제스프리는 품질 표준화와 가격 협상에서 중요한 역할을 담당하고 있습니다.

키위 덩굴을 통해 급속히 확산된 PSA 질병은 2010년 이후 심각한 피해를 입히고 5억 달러 이상의 손실을 초래했습니다.

골드 키위 품종인 Hort16A는 PSA에 매우 취약하여 키위 산업에 막대한 영향을 미쳤습니다.

러셀 로우는 식물 및 식품 연구소의 육종 프로그램을 통해 내병성 선골드 품종을 개발했고, 이 품종은 이후 뉴질랜드의 10억 달러 규모의 산업이 되었으며 현재 뉴질랜드의 키위 수출을 주도하고 있습니다.

중국은 Zespri의 최대 고객이며, 미국은 SunGold의 성장 시장입니다.

Zespri는 매년 한정된 수의 라이선스를 경매에 부쳐 선골드의 공급을 조절하고 가격을 높입니다.

키위 재배자들은 노동력 부족과 기상이변 등의 어려움에 직면해 있지만, 접목과 기타 기술을 활용해 미래를 대비하고 있습니다.

과일 성숙도 및 질병 관리를 위한 검사 프로세스

재배자는 실험실에서 과일의 적절한 성숙도, 색 발현, 단단함, 당도, 종자 색을 테스트합니다.

건조 물질 테스트는 과일의 단맛과 가치를 결정하는 데 도움이 됩니다.

작물의 품종은 질병 저항성에 매우 중요하며, 과학자들은 시장에서 다양한 바나나 옵션을 장려하는 동시에 내병성 캐번디시 바나나 품종을 육종하기 위해 노력하고 있습니다.

회복력 있는 미래를 위한 키위 육종

키위 육종 센터의 과학자들은 선골드 품종의 성공에 이어 기후 위기에 대응하기 위해 키위 품종을 지속적으로 육종하고 있습니다.

새로운 루비레드 키위 품종은 PSA 저항성과 높은 수요를 바탕으로 이번 시즌에 100만 트레이 판매를 기록할 것으로 예상됩니다.

연구팀은 더워지는 기온과 변화하는 해충에도 견딜 수 있는 키위 개발을 목표로 DNA 테스트를 통해 육종 과정의 속도를 높이고 있습니다.