Last week KVH ran it’s six monthly KiwiNet workshop, with around 60 people from across the kiwifruit industry attending the day’s presentations.

The theme for the workshop was industry preparedness, and focused on sharing knowledge and expertise about the ongoing Auckland fruit fly response, the contribution KiwiNet has made, and how we can all continue to work together so that the networks input to the next response can be greater, if called upon.

Guests from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and AsureQuality (AQ) joined the workshop to provide exclusive insights into response decision-making, impacts, and operational activities.

After presentations from KVH about the role of the kiwifruit industry in the response at a Governance level, and Zespri about the market responses to fruit fly and industry logistics, there was a panel discussion to provide a 360-degree overview of what it’s like on a response and what KiwiNet volunteers should know for next time.

The panel discussed KiwiNet members skills and experiences and how these could be enhanced with extra training opportunities, the types of support available from AQ and KVH before and during responses, and logistics arrangements that would help future volunteers in the field.

A portion of the worskhop focused on raising awareness about wider kiwifruit biosecurity initiatives, including presentations about the new on-orchard biosecurity guidelines booklet and the updated Kiwifruit’s Most Unwanted list.

From here, KiwiNet members and KVH will work on improvements that can be made to the model to ensure the very best, well prepared industry resource is always available in a major biosecurity response.

Read more about KiwiNet here or in the June/July issue of the Kiwifruit Journal.