Waimea Fruit Tree Varieties

Waimea Variety Management Limited develops and manages new varieties and cultivars, evaluating them at testing sites in Nelson, Hawkes Bay and Central Otago. It arranges intellectual property protection through non-propagation agreements, trademarks, plant variety rights and plant patents. This allows it to license tested material locally and internationally, and collect royalties.

The company has been involved with the development of club varieties in New Zealand, including the apples TentationTM (Delblush), Sonya® (Nevson), Divine® (Delfloki) and Ambrosia and the open varieties Aztec, Candy, Mahana Red® (Redfield), and Rosy Glow.

It also operates a MAF accredited quarantine facility that enables the sourcing of material from accredited facilities overseas.

Waimea Variety Management was set up by Waimea Nurseries in 2000 to procure, evaluate and commercialise new varieties of fruit. The company built an approved quarantine facility in Nelson to ensure that material from a range of countries could come in more easily, according to Mike Simpson, CEO of Waimea Nurseries.

“When we bring new material into New Zealand it goes through the quarantine process and then we establish trial plantings. If it is successful we commercialise it – propagate it and offer it to local growers,” says Mike.

“We also market New Zealand varieties overseas. These are generally mutations that have been spotted by growers and that have new attractive characteristics. We help them by growing more trees, evaluating the fruit and sending the new variety to our networks overseas.”

“We look after the intellectual property side of things by arranging non-propagation agreements, trademarks, plant variety rights and plant patents. This allows us to license tested material locally and internationally, and collect royalties.”

Mike says that a decade or so ago there was a tendency to restrict the numbers of plantings of particular varieties and so control the supply channel and limit competition as a way of keeping prices high. These were termed “club” varieties. However, with hindsight it appears that restricting the supply restricted overall demand and may have also been counterproductive by restricting the supply of onshore services.

“Open” varieties are the ones that are freely available, and today the trend is for most new plantings to be open varieties.

One of the company’s first projects proved to be its most successful so far – the Aztec apple. This is a blushed red high-colour mutation of the Fuji variety and was found by a Nelson grower. It was offered around the world and has proved hugely popular in the USA where between 500,000 and 800,000 trees are sold every year with royalties coming back to NZ. Aztec has not been particularly successful in New Zealand because growers believe that their customers prefer striped apples.

However, recently a striped version of Aztec has been found. Named Candy, it has been planted in reasonable numbers in New Zealand.

Other varieties handled by WVM include Redfield, a NZ apple sold locally as Mahana Red™, and Rosy Glow, an Australian import which comes under the Pink Lady® brand. A new apple called Ariane has had its first shipment sold through Sainsburys in the UK, and a new pear called Angelys with just 50 hectares planted so far has the first fruit going onto the local market about now.

“One of the most promising varieties currently is Lady in Red, another mutation of Pink Lady, that was spotted by an orchardist and grown over a number of years. WVM was brought in to work in conjunction with another nursery to grow more trees and use our overseas contacts and relationships to license the variety outside NZ,” says Mike.

“Also in the pipeline are a very early Fuji strain called September Wonder®, which is in the first year of commercialisation, and an early Royal Gala mutation from France, which is about to be commercialised. Along with them there are a string of new cherry and peach varieties that are being commercialised, including Flatto® peaches, and we are moving into citrus too.”

The company is also working on better choices for home gardeners allowing them to produce really good quality fruit more easily. Dwarfing varieties of apple, like Blush Babe, which are more suitable for home crops and courtyards, are being sourced through overseas networks, imported into New Zealand and distributed through the garden centres. There are also new selections of kiwifruit, blueberries, stone fruits including the Flatto peaches, and nectarines, and disease resistant apples that don’t require as much spraying or maintenance.

While fruiting plants may be the biggest part of the Waimea Variety Management business, they also have a number of interesting ornamental plants. There is increasing interest in a dwarf Liquidambar named Little Richard, and a new thorn-less Robinia has been recently released, called Tropical Splash.