How about them apples? The team behind New Zealand's future apples and pears

A core part of Aotearoa's billion-dollar apple and pear export industry is its capacity for innovation, those in the industry say.

New Zealand may make up just a small percentage of the global supply but it has "made a name for itself" as a country with higher productivity levels and quality fruit, Prevar chief executive Tony Martin told Country Life.

Prevar was founded 20 years ago to develop new apple and pear varieties in collaboration with Plant and Food Research. The peak industry bodies New Zealand Apples & Pears and Apple and Pear Australia also hold stakes in the joint venture.

There today's scientists are busy creating the apples and pears of tomorrow.

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Prevar holds exclusive access to the genetic material in Plant & Food Research's apple and pear repository, allowing them to develop and sell new apple and pear varieties - including Dazzle, Rockit, and Sassy apples, and PIQA pears.

Martin described it as a dynamic industry in which consumer taste profiles are always changing.

"There's not too many countries in the world where apples don't make up part of the fruit bowl.

"While we still have a lot of the traditional apple varieties around, such as Granny Smith, you'll find so many different apple varieties now in the global marketplace."

Crunch, flavour, texture, sweetness and acidity, and increasingly nutritional and vitamin value are among traits consumers are looking for these days, according to Amanda Lyon, Prevar's brand manager.

"As the apples have been improving over time so have consumer expectations lifted," she said.

With research and development taking up to 15 years or longer, Lyon said they were looking much, much further ahead.

"The apples people are enjoying today such as Dazzle and Lemonade, they were developed many, many years ago."

Making a good apple

While Prevar sets the brief for future apples and pears, it's the scientists at Plant and Food who spend many years working towards this.

Natalie Profitt, the pipfruit breeding programme operations manager, said the process is slow going.

"That's why I've been here 20 years. You've got to wait to actually see any of the, reap the rewards of your work."

She talked Country Life through the team's work in the breeding lab, where they spend days evaluating apples and looking for parent types to cross-pollinate.

"You've got to sift through those ones to find the good ones."

When it comes to taste-testing apples, Profitt is looking for texture - the apples need to be crisp and firm, as well as juicy - and flavour needs to have a good balance of sweetness and acidity with no bitterness and good aromatics.

"After the taste side of it is the aesthetics as well. It needs to look nice. People sort of eat with their eyes."

In the first two years, the team cross-pollinate 10 to100 pairs of parent plants, creating thousands of seeds to be planted in the glass house the following season.

Over the following two years, up to 12,000 seedlings are transferred to the nursery, some of which will later be grafted onto rootstock and planted for further trials and monitoring.

There are six growing rooms in the glasshouses. There is a fast growth room which can shave a year off the growing process. This is for the small varieties and for fruit which scientists are particularly keen to grow quickly.

"We grow them up on strings and have the room quite hot and quite humid as apples will grow quite well naturally in the heat," Profitt explained.

Having to pinch out the lateral roots to encourage upwards growth can be quite labour intensive and there is limited space for 2000 plants, so they have to be selective.

The fruit has to be regularly checked over the summer and sprayed.

"Being quite humid they're quite susceptible to disease."

Those that show promise in the first two stages can progress to the third stage where the wood is grafted onto trees. These are then monitored by the physiology team for growth and crop.

It might be four or five years before the first fruit is harvested. Then it is over to Anna Tattersall's team in the post-harvest lab.

"We put them through their final paces."

This includes looking at how the fruit stores, since so much of New Zealand's crop is exported.

She will also measure firmness, sugar content and internal ethaline concentration which relates to the fruit ripening process.

All in all, the breeding programme can take 15 years or more.

A future in gene technology?

The long breeding process is one reason why Prevar supports the government's Gene Technology Bill.

Martin said advanced breeding technologies such as gene editing can dramatically shorten the time taken to develop a new commercially viable variety.

"The global apple and pear market is worth approximately NZ$130 billion, yet New Zealand accounts for less than one percent of that in market share. We're not a volume player - the only way we are going to continue to compete globally is through innovation.

"This technology offers growers a real opportunity to tackle climate change, pest and disease pressures, consumer demand for fruit grown with fewer chemical inputs, and a market that increasingly values superior taste, texture, and nutritional benefits."

Martin sees gene editing as complementary rather than replacing traditional breeding methods, adding the Plant and Food team's work was "world class" and globally recognised.

He hopes more new varieties and innovation will create more opportunities for New Zealanders to access the apples so enjoyed overseas.

Demand for New Zealand apples in Asia largely outstrips supply, he said.

"We'd love more kiwis to be able to taste the very best of our apple selections that we breed and grow."