More orchards go down with Psa

A further 43 orchards have been identified as having the dreaded Psa-V disease this week - and most of the affected fruit is the green variety.

This brings the total number of affected orchards to 434.

But Kiwifruit Vine Health general manager John Burke says the spread does not necessarily mean the vines will die as gold vines have.

Mr Burke said the increasing evidence of the disease in green Hayward orchards was raising anxiety levels among growers, and about 500 attended a meeting in Tauranga to discuss their concerns yesterday.

"We told growers that what should be remembered is that this time last year we found spotting on leaves of green kiwifruit vines but it didn't progress at all.

"This year we are finding a lot more infected orchards but it appears to be weather-related as we have had weeks of rain," he said.

Wet conditions, especially those coupled with winds, are known to favour the spread of the bacterial disease.

Mr Burke said the message to growers at the meeting had been that it was "business as usual" and they should continue orchard management practices towards producing a crop for 2012.

"It will be three to four weeks before we know how bad it may be in green."

Green kiwifruit comes into leaf later than gold so the increase in symptoms was not unexpected.

In Italy, green kiwifruit had proven to be more resistant to the disease and, in fact, there were now signs of recovery in both green and gold varieties in that country, Mr Burke said.

Mr Burke said the industry focus was on the recovery pathway ahead once ways of managing the disease were found.