The Bay of Plenty is doing it tough. The region holds its collective breath, hoping the Rena doesn’t break up on the Astrolabe Reef, the coastal clean-up continues, and forty three new cases of the virulent PSA-V kiwifruit vine disease have been reported this week.

This brings the total number of infected orchards to more than 460, according to Kiwifruit Vine Health, the agency set up by the government to respond to the disease.

Worringly,  most of the new cases of the disease reported are in green kiwifruit orchards. Until recently it was mainly gold kiwifruit vines that were affected. The priority zones set up to try and control the disease now stretch from Waihi to Opotiki.

John Burke, general manager of Kiwfruit Vine Health told Country99 tv that while the news about green kiwifruit was disappointing, it was a matter of ‘wait and see’

"What we are seeing, in Te Puke in particular, is a big increase in the number of green orchards that are now testing positive for PSA V and those orchards are displaying what we call primary symptoms at the moment.

" After the weather of a couple of weeks ago There is a lot of leaf spotting and growers are very concerned."

John Burke says a smiliar situation occurred last year.

"It’s really wait and see. PSA V is very invasive and damaging to gold vines, but last year on green we had a similar situation on a smaller scale with spotting, and then it just stabilized and didn’t progress.

"So we are really hoping that will be the case again this year. We will have a lot better idea in about 3 or 4 weeks time, when the vines are flowering."