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Kiwifruit in the minds of most people, including many growers, means one variety. The Hayward variety has been the mainstay of New Zealand since the 1960's. This variety was once known as Wright's Large Oval, named after Hayward Wright who selected the variety between 1926 and 1930. It took 50 years before the variety became planted on a large scale. I still hear some new growers in the industry ask why the variety was not protected. If it had been the patent would have run out in the early 1950's, long before anyone, except Macloughlin, Bayliss and Earp families, took Kiwifruit seriously.
In the 50 years before 1980, private growers and nurserymen, looked at plants in research collections or at the nurseries and decided which was the best to try. Abbott, Allison, Monty, Gracie and many other types were grown commercially. Most of them cropped better than Hayward and were preferred by many early growers. We owe them all a big debt for field testing of varieties, with Hayward coming out on top.
Now we are in the age of plant patents and the legal jungle of intellectual property rights. We have seen two patented varieties released in the last 10 years. Tomua, an early, sweet green flesh type that within 10 years has been withdrawn from the market and Zespri Gold, a yellow flesh type with very new taste, which appears to be making the grade. One failure and one success. There are rumours of red flesh types, small grape like smooth skin types and maybe more yellow flesh types in the research pipeline. It will be interesting to see if our new managed approach to new varieties works out better than the "suck it and see" approach of our forefathers in this industry.
What do you plant now ? My advice is Zespri Gold if Zespri International decides to give out more licences. Otherwise, Hayward, which is still producing great profits compared to many other forms of farming.
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