A MAF report on how the kiwifruit canker Psa-V arrived in New Zealand has overlooked New Zealand research that shows China, kiwifruit's ancestral home, could be the source.
Primary Industries Minister David Carter says the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries' work tracing the potential entry points for PSA into New Zealand identified pollen as one of several possible pathways.

As a result the kiwifruit pollen import process is to be reviewed, says David.

Seeka CEO Mike Franks is questioning the validity of the MAF Psa-V tracing report.

'There appears to be a glaring omission of the work undertaken by the University of Otago.”.

New Zealand's leading applied genomics team at Otago University has completed sequencing DNA from New Zealand, China and Italy, says Mike,

'They have determined while all three are the same variety or strain of Psa, subtle regional differences in the genome between Italy and New Zealand means it's unlikely those two countries cross infected each other.

'In the MAF tracing report they actually say they don't know if Psa-V is in China, yet the University of Otago sequenced it, and confirmed what it is and it's unlikely Italy and New Zealand have cross infected because of the differences in the genome, and those are glaring omissions from that MAF report.”

MAF has failed to recognise that Psa-V even exists in China, says Mike.

'In my opinion, it's such a significant omission it goes to the validity of the outcome itself. If they had actually worked with the Otago people and picked up on their work, they would have realised that their conclusions could be wrong, and it would point to where they should look.”

Geneticist at the Otago University department of biochemistry, Russell Poulter, says the gene sequencing of the Chinese Psa strain is just being completed. But the Chinese themselves completed part of the sequencing and the data is available on line.

'We don't want to bag the MAF report, which full of really careful and interesting stuff, says Russell.

'On page 18 the report cheerfully says neither China nor Chile have reported the presence of Psa-V or virulent Psa. That's simply wrong.

'Page 19 table two states a couple of times that China is not known to have Psa-V. Not only is it known, it's been published.

'They have even put a little bit of the sequence into the public data base. It's not like its obscure information that they mightn't have bumped into. It's something they really should have known.

'You could say the report got written six months ago but it's a report that is urgently needed and it's going to modify the way things are done,” says Russell.

It's not just MAF. The kiwifruit industry Psa oversight organisation Kiwifruit Vine Health has people on its scientific oversight board that really ought to be aware of the Otago research says Russell.

'MAF must have been in contact with KVH, and if not, something really very odd is happening.”

'There's just been a breakdown somewhere in the system.”

The Otago research is under a government-funded organisation called New Zealand Genomics Ltd, NNGL,

It was set up by the government with participation by the Universities of Auckland Massey and Otago.

They have completed the sequencing of several NZ Psa strains and Italian Psa and are about to complete the complete sequencing of a Chinese strain.

'The NZ strains carry a few distinctive sequences and in addition the Italian ones carry distinctive Italian sequences. So if you give me a strain and say the labels fell off I can tell you which one it is.”

It means the New Zealand Psa strains cannot be the source of the Psa infections that got into Italy and that Italy is not the source of the infection in New Zealand.

'You are left with China, which is the natural home of kiwifruit, and where we now have identified strains which look as if they could very easily be the progenitor or ancestor or the origin of the thing,” says Rusell.

The questions unanswered are, did Psa come directly from China or via Chile.

'The situation in Chile at present is really quite murky,' says Russell. 'We don't have access to any strains or sequence and nor does anybody else.

'So we don't know if the bug is in Chile or not. If it is we can say the bug came from China. If that is the case it came out china either directly or indirectly. There have been substantial imports of pollen from Chile.”

'If the bug it is in Chile then that pollen will have to be thought of as a real possible route,” says Russell.

He says it really is important to sort out what is happening in Chile, because if nothing's happening in Chile then it has to have come direct out of China.

'It's important to get it sorted. If it is imported pollen, it affects the way we might do things and the way the Australia might do things, because they haven't imported any pollen. It's an urgent real problem.”