ISHS Acta Horticulturae 444: III International Symposium on Kiwifruit
PRODUCTION AND RESEARCH ON KIWIFRUIT IN FRANCE |
| Author: | P. Blanchet |
| Abstract:
In the seventies at the beginning of the kiwifruit industry, France's production ranked second after New Zealand. Nowadays, France ranks third (or fourth depending on the Chilean crop). The production which has been as high as 80000 t in 1992 has slowly dropped to 65000 t in 1994. Only the good orchards with proper management and acceptable soils conditions remained after the 1992 market collapse. With these good orchards (25–35 t/ha, 100 g/fruit) production costs were brought down to a more competitive level. But the devaluation (- 20%) of Italian, Spanish and British currencies against the French Franc have again led to an intolerable competition distortion on the European market. France is still an important player in the market importing 25.000 t and exporting about the same quantity. The considerable amount of research in the seventies and eighties directed toward the mastering of production techniques has led to the high technical level of the French kiwifruit industry. Pollination and fruit-tree physiology are still being investigated intensively. But an emphasis is now put on genetic improvement. Intra-specific and inter-specific breeding including ploidy levels manipulations and the correlated vitroculture techniques (protoplasts, embryo rescue) are major issues for the future of our industry. The achievement of this program will only be possible with a high level of international cooperation between both European and Chinese researchers. | |
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