In 2010 the Psa-V bacterial disease was found in a Bay of Plenty kiwifruit orchard. This was the beginning of a terrible ordeal for many kiwifruit growers. It devastated crops, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs, and hundreds of millions of dollars. But though it spread to some other areas in the North Island, it never made it across the Cook Strait. Claire Concannon learns about the science behind keeping this microbe out of Te Waipounamu.
The Plant and Food Research (today the Bioeconomy Science Institute) team who worked on science to help with the kiwifruit Psa crisis won the Prime Minister’s Science Prize in 2017.
