The Kiwifruit Breeding Centre (KBC), along with Plant & Food Research’s world-leading scientists, are exploring many of the fundamental factors influencing growing system performance. Areas of focus include gene characterisation, gene regulation in response to climate, resilience to disease and physiological responses to drought, and how new growing systems might transform productivity or require cultivars with different growth characteristics or new rootstocks.

We also explore traits enabling adaptation to climate change or improved sustainability, including any impact of future harvesting, grading, packing, storage and transport systems.

Combining new knowledge from this fundamental research ensures that the best kiwifruit can be reimagined, reviewed, reworked, and prioritised based on their estimated potential value, feasibility and expected timeframes for development. This knowledge delivers a highly dynamic “market pull” approach that underpins KBC’s innovation and technology adoption approach.