Collaborative kiwi lab yields fruitful results

10-year partnership with New Zealand preserves germplasm resources

A kiwifruit laboratory established by China and New Zealand a decade ago has yielded fruitful results in preserving germplasm resources, as well as in breeding and promoting new varieties, researchers said.

Kiwifruit is native to China and was introduced to New Zealand in 1904 by a teacher named Isabel Fraser. Growers in New Zealand worked for years to develop the first commercial variety, and in the 1950s, as merchants began to promote the fruit overseas, they named the fruit after the country's national bird, the kiwi.

The China-New Zealand Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Kiwifruit, a collaborative effort between the Sichuan Provincial Academy of Natural Resource Sciences and the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research, was inaugurated by the countries' top leaders in 2014 and became operational in Sichuan Tianfu New Area in 2018.