China, New Zealand reaping rewards of kiwifruit cooperation

Pilkington's work looks at the variety of genetics naturally available in kiwifruit, which will help ensure crop diversity and develop disease tolerance.

"If we have, say, a change in climate and it gets really hot, then if we don't protect that material, another gene that we're interested in may die because the plant that has it is not robust to the heat," she said.

"So if we're looking for a gene for pest and disease resistance but we lose a whole lot of wild material in a climate event … our ability to breed into the future gets harder and harder."

China, as the source of the kiwifruit, offers "more knowledge of the genes that control the traits of the kiwifruit that we can't get around the rest of the world… then we can use that knowledge to breed new kiwifruit varieties", Pilkington added.

Her efforts offer a fitting continuity in the cultivation of kiwifruit, which was introduced to New Zealand from China in the early 20th century. Local growers subsequently came up with a commercial variety that was promoted overseas – naming the fruit after their country's national bird, the kiwi.

The strong ties in kiwifruit research and development can be traced to a major China-New Zealand joint laboratory established in Auckland in 2014, a result of a series of cooperation agreements, with subsequent exchanges in fields ranging from agriculture, culture, science and technology, to trade, tourism and education.