The New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries says it will review its current controls after Australia changed its strategy to deal with a highly contagious virus affecting tomatoes, capsicums and chillies. Across the Tasman, biosecurity experts and industry representatives have declared tomato brown rugose virus not technically feasible to eradicate and moved to a management strategy.
'Tomato virus' was first detected in South Australia last August and has also been found on a farm in Victoria. It is not harmful to humans but infected fruit can ripen irregularly or be deformed. It can also reduce crop yields by 70 percent.
Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Stuart Anderson said MPI had controls in place that were "working well for New Zealand and prevented any issues for our tomato growers after the discovery of tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) at sites in South Australia last August". He said a ban on all Australian tomato imports remained in place, even though only Australian tomatoes from Queensland, an area free from the virus, were imported here.
"We made the decision to suspend imports from all Australian states out of an abundance of caution. As part of the actions we took, tomato and capsicum seeds from Australia require testing for the virus prior to arrival in New Zealand, a requirement already in place for other countries where the virus is present. That requirement remains.
Read more at RNZ