ISHS Acta Horticulturae 610: V International Symposium on Kiwifruit
EPILOGUE:
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| Author: | A.R. Ferguson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract:
Visiting China is always an experience – a fascinating experience – and I have greatly enjoyed my fifth visit to China. I first came to China in 1981 and it is now exciting to see the changes that have been made and also to see the things that have remained unchanged. In particular, when we went on the mid-symposium field trip and left the motorway on our way to the north of Yichang, I realized that if you looked beyond the road, the cars, the power poles and the satellite dishes, then the farms and the villages in the hills could easily have been those in the photographs of E.H. Wilson, the great plant explorer of just on a century ago. I also enjoyed our conference. It was very appropriate that the 5th International Symposium on Kiwifruit should be held in China, and it was even more appropriate that it should be held in Wuhan. Kiwifruit came originally from China and Wuhan itself is close to the original home of the kiwifruit as we have come to know it. Until recently, those of us from outside of China knew relatively little of kiwifruit in China or of the developing kiwifruit industry. Worse, we knew very little of the Chinese research on kiwifruit and it is very pleasing that after this conference, we know much more. However, the most enjoyable part of this meeting has been the renewing of contacts with many old and good friends from different parts of the world. As scientists we are lucky to be able to work on subjects to which we are passionately committed. We are also lucky that through our work we have colleagues from different parts of the world. We were brought together in Wuhan because we all work on kiwifruit but by knowing each other, initially as scientists, we learn much about other countries: colleagues become friends. So when we visit each other, I like to hope that we have become visitors, not just tourists, and that through our friendships we can learn something about each other’s life and culture. We have to be careful, however, that these friendships and contacts remain inclusive rather than exclusive as otherwise this Working Group will wither and become irrelevant. Only four or five of us at the meeting in Wuhan have attended all previous kiwifruit symposia and it is very important that we continue to encourage younger scientists and students to attend: we must be diligent in introducing such newcomers to our old friends and colleagues so that our fellowship of kiwifruit researchers from different countries is maintained: we need to encourage a new generation to continue to work on kiwifruit. I am therefore delighted by the regular exchange of scientists and students between, for example, China, Italy and New Zealand. In the long term, such exchanges are much more useful than quick visits, no matter how informative such visits may be. In some areas of research, as in, for example, the development of new commercial cultivars, we may be competitors, but in most areas of research, we can cooperate without prejudice. We gain by such cooperation as together we can achieve much more than we can separately. So what did I learn from this conference? I think that my over-riding impression is that we have rapidly moved away from thinking and talking only or mainly about ‘Hayward’ and that we are now much more aware of all the other species in the genus Actinidia. In Table 1, I have taken the published papers of previous symposia and the printed abstracts of this symposium and have apportioned them by subject – this is somewhat arbitrary as some papers are not easily pigeonholed and a few don’t fit neatly into any category. However, the trends are unmistakable. At the time of the first symposium in Padova, Italy, the word “kiwifruit” usually implied ‘Hayward’ although some of the other older New Zealand cultivars, such as ‘Bruno’, ‘Monty’ and ‘Abbott’, were still being tested in Europe. For this reason, little more than half the papers at Padova were specifically on ‘Hayward’ (and its pollenisers), even if nearly all dealt with A. deliciosa. At the subsequent meetings, in New Zealand, in Greece and in Chile, these older cultivars were seldom mentioned and at least two thirds of the papers were specifically on ‘Hayward’. At that time, kiwifruit researchers outside of China knew little of the great diversity in Actinidia species and knew even less of the different kiwifruit cultivars that were being developed in China. But when this symposium was held in China, in Wuhan, only a third of the papers were limited to ‘Hayward’ and, indeed, just half were on A. deliciosa. There has been much more emphasis in this symposium on A. chinensis, partly because it is more important commercially in China and partly because cultivars of A. chinensis are now being grown successfully in New Zealand and Italy and on a smaller scale in other countries. There were also many more papers on the genus as a whole and the relationships between Actinidia species. These papers come from both China and from outside of China so it is not just that at this symposium there are proportionately more Chinese research scientists. At the closing of the previous symposium in Santiago, I predicted that it would be the last “to be dedicated to ‘Hayward’ and its pollenisers.” This is indeed what has eventuated. I expect that when we meet again in New Zealand in 2006, there may a partial recovery with proportionately more papers on ‘Hayward’ than there have been at Wuhan. Nevertheless, amongst scientists and growers, if not yet the general public, the word “kiwifruit” is now being used more widely to include any cultivar or species of Actinidia – it is no longer essentially a synonym for ‘Hayward’. Despite these changes in emphasis, the kiwifruit industry around the world still relies on ‘Hayward’. Close to 60% of commercial kiwifruit plantings around the world are made up of ‘Hayward’ and its pollenisers. Outside of China, the dependence is even more marked, accounting for perhaps 95-96% of all plantings. And despite some faults, ‘Hayward’ is still a very good cultivar: indeed, a convincing case can be argued that it was the markedly superior quality of ‘Hayward’ that allowed the rapid development of the kiwifruit as a cultivated fruit plant. Many kiwifruit research scientists have worked almost exclusively on ‘Hayward’, sometimes for 20 years or more, and we have gained by many different disciplines focusing on the one cultivar. Yet there is still much we don’t know or understand about ‘Hayward’. For example, we all know that some lines of fruit taste much better than other lines but we are still not certain how to achieve these higher qualities consistently. There is still plenty of scope for good research. And good research is being done. For example, and to cite only one example, I was very impressed by the paper by Bartolomeo Dichio and colleagues. They asked simple questions and got clear and simple answers and the clarity and simplicity of their findings indicates conceptual clarity. We need more work that really probes in this way rather than simply attempting to find correlations between many measured parameters. I was also impressed by how much the use of newer techniques from biochemistry and molecular biology are helping our understanding of the relationships between different Actinidia species. However, good use of classical techniques can also be revealing and as an example I cite the work of He Zican and colleagues in identifying sex chromosomes in diploid A. chinensis. To be honest, most kiwifruit research workers are probably just a little bored at the prospect of working for another 20 years on the same old cultivar. There is real excitement at the thought of being able to work on new and different kiwifruit cultivars. In this symposium we had more than 20 oral papers and posters on breeding and selection including seven on germplasm resources within the genus, two on genetic maps, and ten on new cultivars of A. arguta, A. chinensis and A. deliciosa. This is more than in all the previous symposia combined. There are thus tremendously exciting prospects for new cultivars. However, there is a difference between an exciting new selection and a cultivar of proven commercial potential. The paper by Nagin Lallu and colleagues, comparing ‘Hayward’ (A. deliciosa) and ‘Hort16A’ (A. chinensis) revealed many of the important constraints that determine whether or not a cultivar will be successfully commercialized. This paper should be read by anyone who thinks that they have a really good new kiwifruit cultivar. Almost all new cultivars of apparent commercial potential will remain that – of apparent commercial potential. The competition from existing cultivars can be dauntingly great. One of the highlights of the symposium was the opportunity of seeing wild kiwifruit vines (A. deliciosa). We normally know kiwifruit only in captivity, in orchards where they are rigidly trained and brutally pruned. It is a joy to see “our” plant growing as it should, climbing exuberantly up through the trees. Admittedly the vines were only small, with only a few fruit, but they gave us an indication of what the wild plant can do. The distance we had to travel and the difficulty in finding readily accessible plants also indicate the drastic depletion of wild kiwifruit resources in China. The miserable size and scruffy appearance of the fruit being offered for sale on the side of the road where we had our picnic lunch demonstrated the progress that we have made over the past one hundred years, from such small fruit to the present commercial cultivars. In a sense, coming to Wuhan for this meeting was, at least for those of us from outside of China, something like coming home, coming back to where the kiwifruit story began. A century ago, kiwifruit plants and seed left from Yichang (Ichang) and were sent down the Yangzi, past Wuhan, on their way to Europe, to the United States and to New Zealand. One collection of seed, possibly from a single vine, possibly even taken from a single fruit, went to New Zealand and this was the foundation of the kiwifruit industry in New Zealand and, indeed, the kiwifruit industry throughout the world except for China itself. Only very recently has new material of different origin been planted commercially outside of China. Why the kiwifruit was successfully established in New Zealand and not initially elsewhere is not clear: perhaps it was just the concatenation of good climate, good orchardists, a good cultivar, good marketers and good luck. If that seed had not gone to New Zealand one hundred years ago, probably the kiwifruit would instead still be the mihoutao, with the wild plants being roughly harvested for their fruit to supply strictly local markets within China. That shipment of seed to New Zealand therefore had momentous consequences. Although kiwifruit may be only a minor crop in terms of total world production of fresh fruit, they are an important crop for us. They provide most of us with a living, they brought us together here in Wuhan. Kiwifruit have now been in cultivation for just on one hundred years: we can but hope that they will continue to flourish. I thank Professor Huang and the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Botany who made this meeting in Wuhan so successful and so enjoyable. I hope that we in New Zealand can do as well in organizing the 6th International Symposium on Kiwifruit. Tables Table1. Subject matter of the published papers from previous International Symposia on Kiwifruit and of the oral papers and posters submitted at Wuhan.
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