YOUR INDUSTRY
Packaged Roxy ready for overseas markets
After 20 years of breeding, Roxy heads to Vietnam Bill and Erica Lynch love the “intrigue and suspense” of being plant breeders and after more than 20 years developing a range of new apple varieties, they are selling fruit from the first of their brood, the Roxy apple, to Asia. Anne Hardie The couple operate a small family orchard at Redwood Valley in Tasman where their son, Dan, now oversees the day-to-day management of 40ha of apples. Their foray into plant breeding began more than two decades ago when they recognised the only way a small family orchard could survive without the economies of scale of larger enterprises, was by being innovative. To them, that meant creating unique varieties of apples that could produce the higher returns they needed to counter the ever-increasing cost of production. They have planted new varieties produced by the industry over the years, but often an apple looked good but lacked flavour or was too hard to grow successfully. Apart from being disappointing, continually replacing apples was a cost that a small family orchard could not sustain. 42
The ORCHARDIST : APRIL 2022
They wanted varieties that not only looked good, but had the flavour of heritage apples, were easy to grow and were not just a fly-by-nighter in the market. Roxy is the first of their apples being exported to buyers, though the variety has been trialled in China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong during the past four years without a brand. This year it has a name and about 12,000 cartons are heading to Vietnam. Bill says they have customers who want to buy Roxy and growers who want to grow it, but first it has to prove it can achieve a good return before more growers will plant it and produce the quantity for interested customers. It is a Catch-22. “The market wants lots to trial, but you don’t have lots until it proves itself.”
