Consumers in more than 50 countries enjoy the taste and flavour they’ve come to expect from New Zealand kiwifruit, with the last of this year’s harvest of our iconic fruit shortly on their way across the ocean.
Knowing their fruit comes from Aotearoa New Zealand means these consumers have few concerns about safety or the way their tasty snack was produced.
“Food and sharing kai are such an integral part of building communities and connections, there are very strong social, cultural and emotional connections to kai and growing practices,” says Dr Jolon Dyer, Group General Manager Science Services at Rangahau Ahumāra Kai Plant & Food Research. “A key aspect is the connection to place and people. Where was the food produced, what was the soil like, what region and country is it from? We associate values and attributes to that.”
Provenance plays a huge role in the marketing of food products. Not only can food grown in different places have different flavours - sauvignon blanc from Marlborough tastes different to that grown in California, for example - consumers also associate other characteristics with food production.
Overseas, food from New Zealand symbolises safety and sustainability, as well as high quality, in consumer minds.
Kiwifruit is a prime example, and one which, thanks to some clever marketers in the 1950s, is intrinsically linked with our national identity and our small, flightless endemic bird. While the ‘Chinese gooseberry’ was only brought to our shores in the early 1900s and the standard green ‘Hayward’ cultivar is grown around the world, New Zealand is known as the kiwifruit capital, with unique products exported by single desk marketer Zespri.
The yellow-fleshed kiwifruit first bred by Plant & Food Research in the late 1980s, launched in 2000 as Zespri GOLD Kiwifruit, was the start of a kiwifruit revolution in consumer minds. This has been subsequently enhanced by a new yellow cultivar, marketed as Zespri SunGold Kiwifruit, with the traffic light completed in 2019 with Zespri RubyRed Kiwifruit.
Zespri products are known to be unique, with flavours that consumers love, and are produced in a country renowned for sustainability. New varieties for the Zespri portfolio are continuously under development, with the breeding now undertaken by the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre, a Plant & Food Research-Zespri joint venture.
Plant & Food Research is not only responsible for breeding these new varieties. The organisation’s scientists work alongside Zespri to develop protocols for every step of the kiwifruit supply chain, from how best to grow, when to harvest and how to store the fruit so that consumers get the same taste every time they buy.
Each kiwifruit cultivar has slightly different requirements, but the basic premise remains the same – high quality, safe fruit grown with low environmental impact.
Countries around the world use provenance as a selling point for their foods. Since 2002, feta has been designated a traditional Greek dish, and only Greek-made feta can be sold in and by countries in the European Union. Last year, the European court ruled that Danish dairies were breaking the law by making, selling and, in particular, exporting cheese labelled as feta.
Similarly, the name Champagne is reserved for sparkling wine produced in a very specific area of France that meet exact standards (and has been since treaties signed in the late 1890s). Use of the name is legally protected in more than 70 countries.
There are many New Zealand foods with a strong provenance story, says Dyer. “There are foods that are unique to us, that are of New Zealand and only New Zealand. There are also foods that grow elsewhere but are strongly associated with New Zealand in some way.”
Sustainability is at the heart of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history.
“We recognise the continuous connection Maori have to the whenua, both historically and today,” says Stacey Whitiora, Plant & Food Research Group General Manager Māori. “A growing number of Māori organisations are continuing to enter the food sector – Māori own $13 billion in primary sector assets, and Māori horticulture has grown 300 per cent in 12 years. There is an opportunity for science to learn from Māori and Mātauranga Maori and work together to develop strong provenance stories grounded in the connection to te taiao whenua, wai and kai.
“The regions that make up Aotearoa have their own special characteristics. The whenua, the ngahere, the wai, the people who live in these environments, all create a rich whakapapa around caring about the land and producing food for others to enjoy. Māori are kaitiaki who play an intergenerational, custodial role to ensure these taonga are here for future generations.”
Torere Macadamias is a Māori business, employing predominantly local Māori and whanau, and incorporating Mātauranga Māori into their production systems as they work with iwi and community groups to establish new, or expand existing, macadamia orchards in the Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and East Coast regions.
Compositional analysis of Torere Macadamias nuts by Plant & Food Research has shown they have higher concentrations of three key nutrients - vitamin C, vitamin B6 and selenium – when compared with macadamias grown overseas. The analysis also showed that the vitamin B6 found in Torere Macadamias nuts reached concentrations that support a range of health benefits, including combatting tiredness and fatigue, as well as maintaining a healthy metabolism.
This information has been incorporated into Torere Macadamias’ marketing strategy to position the macadamia as a high-value, niche product from Aotearoa New Zealand, and gives Torere Macadamias, and the wider New Zealand macadamia sector, a competitive advantage.
Torere Macadamias is also working with Plant & Food Research to develop orchard management protocols to replace outdated models based on old or overseas-grown varieties, to increase yields of high-quality nuts with good nutritional profiles, while aligning with Te Ao Māori principles.
“Our scientists and our Māori partners share a connection to kai, a connection to the whenua, and are building mutual respect for how they can work together through the weaving together of Mātauranga Māori and science. By working in an authentic and genuine way, we can create new knowledge that contributes to a future where we have nutritious sustainable kai that reflects Aotearoa,” says Whitiora.
Plant & Food Research has a vision of partnering with Māori to bring together Mātauranga Māori and science to evolve innovation opportunities for Aotearoa New Zealand. With this aim, the organisation has launched a new research programme, Authentic Taonga Foods, to enable partnership between scientists and Māori that combine knowledge to develop new foods and other products from indigenous flora and fauna with a unique provenance story.
“It’s becoming increasingly important to consider everything about where food comes from, not just the environmental impact of the production system but also the effect on the community where the food was produced,” says Dyer. “Bringing all these aspects together when we create the foods of the future provides a really authentic provenance story that consumers will value.”
For more information: plantandfood.co.nz
