BEIJING: New Zealand kiwifruit scientist Sarah Pilkington has been working with Chinese colleagues to protect the fruit’s genetic resource materials and cultivate diversity, a collaboration that is grounded in President Xi Jinping’s 2014 state visit to New Zealand.
The establishment at that time of a China-New Zealand kiwifruit virtual joint laboratory by the Sichuan Provincial Academy of Natural Resource Sciences and the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research is among the cooperation projects that resulted from that visit.
During the visit, China and New Zealand signed a series of cooperation agreements and achieved a slew of concrete outcomes regarding exchanges in the fields of agriculture, culture, science and technology, trade, tourism and education, including the kiwifruit virtual joint laboratory.
At the lab in Auckland, Pilkington now leads a team that uses molecular technologies to cultivate new kiwifruit varieties, or cultivars, at the Plant and Food Research group of the New Zealand government’s Bioeconomy Science Institute.
The lab focuses on research that is mutually beneficial, said the award-winning scientist, adding that the two sides hold regular exchanges, such as training and visits, that contribute further to knowledge sharing and research collaboration.
“Kiwifruit originated in China. … We want to help our Chinese colleagues protect what material is there and the diversity in it for the future,” Pilkington said, referring to the fruit’s germplasm, the genetic resources, such as seeds, tissues and cells, that are maintained for breeding, preservation and research.
Researchers from Sichuan province who are involved in the joint lab have also hailed its achievements in preserving germplasm resources, breeding new varieties and promoting them, helping to develop the sector in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative through kiwifruit cultivation technologies.
Liverpool Zhang, a relationship and development manager at Plant and Food Research (Greater China), said, “We’re also leveraging the partnership to work with others, to maximize the benefits and potential to China and the global kiwifruit sector.”
The joint lab unveiled during President Xi’s visit 11 years ago continues to have an impact on the industry and beyond, he said.
Its Bioeconomy Science Institute international joint laboratory platform and links also mean that the New Zealand side is able to enjoy “intangible benefits, because that means we can do more work, and they have more people and more resources. It makes our partnership stronger”, Zhang said.
During the 2014 trip, Xi met with then-New Zealand governor-general Jerry Mateparae and then prime minister John Key, and the two sides decided to upgrade the China-New Zealand relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership.
A joint statement between the two sides noted that they had enjoyed a comprehensive cooperative relationship since the early 2000s, as well as “four firsts”: New Zealand was the first developed country to conclude bilateral negotiations on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, in August 1997; the first to recognize China as a market economy, in April 2004; the first to begin free trade agreement negotiations with China, in December 2004; and the first to conclude a free-trade agreement with China, in April 2008.
The two sides aimed for a target of NZ$30 billion ($17.5 billion) in bilateral trade by 2020, according to the statement, and they noted that China had become the largest goods trading partner of New Zealand for the first time in 2013. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
