For a while now, kiwifruit and apples have led the New Zealand horticulture industry, creating billion-dollar businesses and exports that have reached all corners of the world. Now, avocados might be able to join that league and become the next New Zealand super fruit, through increased investment in science and technology, says Plant & Food Research chief executive, David Hughes.
“What would really make a difference (to the industry) is to have more exemplars like kiwifruit and apples where a broad-based investment in science and technology was translated through to significant economic, environmental and social outcomes,” Hughes told nzherald.co.nz. “There’s quite a few other sectors within horticulture where we could apply the same learnings. There’s a set of quite interesting tier two crops in New Zealand which are more at the hundred-million-dollar level of industry. There’s a capacity for those to be lifted up to the billion dollars.”
Hughes does say that quite substantive investments would be required to change the way avocados are grown and take it from business as usual to world leading. “But it’s within our grasp because we’ve done it before on two other crops. We have already broken the mold and doing things in a different way that other countries have not yet been able to emulate and copy.”