The battle against PSA has now headed offshore, with Zespri forming a partnership with a United States company that produces viruses that kill bacteria.

Zespri has teamed up with Utah based company OmniLytics, to look for PSA killing phage.

Phage are natural viruses that live in water, and that infect, and kill bacteria.

So far the partnership has discovered three phage that kill PSA, and they say they need to identify two more before they can develop a prototype biological control, to spray onto infected vines.

Zespri innovation manager Bryan Parkes says it is an example of the global efforts the industry is going to, to fight the disease that is wreaking havoc on the $1.5 billion dollar industry. 

“The virus when they infect a bacterial cell can kill it in a matter of less than an hour or so.

"In the process of killing it they make at least a hundred copies of themselves and then those hundred copies go off and infect the bacteria next to it.

“So we don’t actually know how long the process would take to kill of an infection or whether it would just work as a protectant on the surface of the leaf.”  

Zespri says OmniLytics is a world leader in the phage technology, especially in the control of plant pathogens in horticultural crops.

It has already spearheaded work in phage solutions for bacterial diseases in tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cabbage, melons, strawberry, apples, pears citrus and ornamentals.

Zespri says biological control phage are non-toxic to humans, plants and animals,  and leave no residues and are perfectly safe with no harmful side effects.

This means there is a tremendous advantage when it comes to worker re-entry into the fields, through packaging of the produce, and all the way down to end-user consumption.

New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers president Peter Ombler says Zespri’s partnership is great news for growers, who are extremely anxious about the impacts of PSA on the harvest, this coming Spring.

“Well I think it’s good we’re going to need a very all encompassing very wide perspective of research and development options to solve these problems that we’re got.

“It’s going to need that sort of lateral thinking and thinking outside of New Zealand as well to hopefully give the growers the tools they need to foot it with this problem.”