Kiwifruit company Zespri has developed new varieties of green kiwifruit and hopes one will be commercially grown in the next few years.
Zespri is consulting growers about producing a new tastier green kiwifruit. Photo: 123RF
The company held its inaugural Innovation Symposium in Mount Maunganui yesterday, to showcase the fruits of its annual $35 million research and development budget.
Zespri manager of cultivar development Bryan Parkes said the company was consulting growers about producing a new tastier green kiwifruit.
"We do have some cultivars that have superior taste and superior yield relative to the cultivar that formed the New Zealand kiwifruit industry, the Hayward cultivar.
We're having discussions with the industry about how we might use those cultivars from a commercial perspective. While they're superior from a taste perspective and therefore we'd expect higher consumer demand for them, we don't necessarily expect their storage life to be as long."
Mr Parkes said the shorter storage life would make it more complicated from a commercial perspective.