The kiwifruit is a small, plum-size fruit with brown, fuzzy skin and small, black seeds. Due to its appearance, it is named after a native New Zealand bird, named “kiwi”.
Image Source: Luc Viatour
Kiwifruit orchards are concentrated mainly in the Bay of Plenty area. Since we are in that area, we had to include a visit in our itinerary. Kiwifruit Country is one that is open for visits. Due to bio-security reasons, visits are strictly in guided tours only. Priced at NZ$40 per family (2 adults 2 children), it includes a 45-minute kiwifruit farm tour, kiwifruit and honey tasting. (P.S. The flower we had was from our guide).
Since we were 45 minutes early, we started off with fruit tasting which included freshly cut kiwifruits, dried kiwifruits and feijoas and fruit jams.
The corner where there were different types of honey for tasting.
We spent some time looking through the local food products and souvenirs on sale too.
And chilled out at this cosy corner with walls filled with information on New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry. New Zealand is now the third largest exporter of kiwifruit or Chinese gooseberry behind China and Italy. Kiwifruits from New Zealand are sold to Zespri and marketed outside of Australasia under a common brand name. This was started with the intention to distinguish New Zealand kiwifruit from others.
At 3pm, our tour started. We toured the 36-hectare orchard in these kiwifruit shaped tram cars pulled by a tractor.
The fruit is a berry from several species of woody vines. It is dioecious with male and female flowers on separate plants. Another interesting fact is kiwifruit flowers do not produce nectar. So if next time someone tries to sell you kiwifruit flora honey, beware and steer clear.
To trick bees in helping with pollination, syrup are pulled into the bee-houses for food. The bees are therefore well-fed and need not look for nectar. At the same time they still collect pollen to feed their larva, in the process pollinate the kiwifruit flowers. The colourful boxes along the road are where the bees are kept.
Fruit harvesting season is in April, May and June. During this period, the fruit farm may need up to 20,000 fruit-pickers to hand-pick, perform quality control and wrap the fruits. Only those which have passed strict quality control and classified as Grade 1 fruits, can be sold overseas. Those that do not have perfect, unblemished skin, not perfectly symmetrical in shape are sold in local markets even though they don’t taste any different.
We were all excited to see real fruits on the vines.
Beside green kiwifruits, the orchard is also cultivating golden and red kiwifruits. The golden kiwifruit plant is more robust and bears fruits earlier in the season than green kiwifruit plant. The red kiwifruit is another variant which has come into the market on a trial basis. It is nearing the end of a 5-year trial period and thereafter needs another 3 years or so for commercial scale cultivation before mass market sale.
Besides kiwifruits, we saw their avocado trees too.
The tour is informative and educational, in our opinion, worth the visit. If you can, do drop by Kiwifruit Country if you are in the Bay of Plenty area.
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Read about my trip itinerary and the places visited in New Zealand North Island 2019 .
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