A leading supplier of pollen to the New Zealand kiwifruit industry has claimed a major breakthrough in delivering pollen grains that are free from the bacterial vine infection Psa, which was discovered on a number of kiwifruit orchards in New Zealand last November and which has been present for some time in other parts of the world including Italy and Japan.
Kiwi Pollen NZ Ltd, which has been working with science company Plant & Food Research with the support of export marketer Zespri and pan-industry organisation Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH), said it had found evidence to suggest a high temperature treatment can kill Psa without affecting the viability of the pollen.
The research provides a potential breakthrough for kiwifruit growers looking to increase product yield and quality through artificial pollination, which is due to start in October.
Kiwi Pollen approached Zespri and Plant & Food earlier this year with the 'promising' results of initial research conducted into heat treatment of pollen.
The company is understood to have offered to provide their findings to a wider research programme underway into cleaning pollen of Psa.
Further trial research overseen by Plant & Food Research subsequently confirmed that exposing Psa to certain temperature-time combinations was an effective way of killing the bacterial disease while ensuring the pollen remained fully intact.
Kiwi Pollen director Jill Hamlyn said the potential breakthrough was promising and added that she hoped it would help end the uncertainty for orchardists needing to balance recommended Psa orchard management practices with a need to continue with artificial pollination next season.
The next stage in the pollen research programme will be to develop a method of applying heat treatment on a commercial scale and to develop a test to give certainty that pollen heat-treated on a commercial scale is indeed free of Psa.
Zespri's quality and innovation general manager David Tanner said the pollen research was a critical project for the industry and was one of around 50 research projects started soon after the outbreak of Psa in November 2010.
'These projects are partnering with the best scientific minds in New Zealand and globally to research key areas of Psa including detection of the disease, the biology of the disease, on-orchard management techniques, and treatment or reduction of the disease,' Dr Tanner said.
Plant & Food Research's business development manager for kiwifruit, Stuart Kay, said the contribution of Kiwi Pollen to the project was a great example of the industry working with the scientists to come up with practical solutions that could contribute toward the management of Psa.
Kiwi Pollen is the world's largest supplier of kiwifruit pollen and pollen applicators. It owns PollenAid, the technology developed by the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for the collection and wet spraying of kiwifruit pollen to maximise kiwifruit pollination.
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