Year 12 Business Studies and Innovative Horticulture students recently visited Trevelyan’s and New Zealand Plant and Food Research in Te Puke.  The focus was sustainability, an area in which Trevelyan’s excels and has won awards for. Students listened to a presentation and then went on a tour of the massive packhouse complex to see specific sustainability initiatives in action.

After lunch it was down the road to New Zealand Plant and Food Research, home of the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre. Here students heard about sustainability from the viewpoints of decomposition and biological control. They observed composting in action under microscopes, got to see beetles that eat plastic, and tasted chocolate coated crickets, grasshoppers and locusts, with some quite mixed reactions. They also got to see the unusual kiwifruit which form the basis of the selective breeding programme to create new varieties.