New Temperate Fruits: Actinidia chinensis and Actinidia deliciosa

The above statement may accurately represent the current situation but will very soon be out of date. The last 30 years has seen the emergence of the kiwifruit from being a small but increasing crop in one country to being a crop of worldwide significance. The next few years will see the entry of new and quite different Actinidia fruit into international trade. The kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa [A. Chev.] C.F. Liang et A.R. Ferguson, Actinidiaceae) is one of the very few temperate fruit crops to have been domesticated this century. At the turn of the century it was still just a wild plant in China, but by 1970 it had been developed into a new fruit crop in New Zealand. Today, as we approach the next century, the kiwifruit is an important commercial crop grown in different parts of the world: it has also become uniquely dependent on international trade as the three biggest producer countries export most of the kiwifruit they produce. Total world production now exceeds a million tonnes per year, more than that of well-established crops such as raspberries and currants, and is soon likely to exceed production of strawberries or of apricots (World Kiwifruit Review 1998). Until recently, the international success of kiwifruit could really be considered as the success of one fruiting cultivar, ‘Hayward’, and associated male (pollenizer) cultivars. World trade has become restricted to this one cultivar and the name ‘Hayward’ could almost be taken as synonymous with “kiwifruit.” Now, however, different cultivars of A. deliciosa are being grown; different males of A. deliciosa have been selected for the specific climatic conditions of different kiwifruit regions; and a start has been made to the commercial cultivation of different Actinidia species with quite distinct fruit.