New Zealand: Viticulture

New Zealand’s remote location has not, as it has done in chile, provided a barrier against the importation of vineyard pests and diseases. Phylloxera still threatens around one-tenth of the country’s vines which are planted on their own, ungrafted root while fanleaf degeneration and leafroll viruses have a detrimental effect on both the quality and quantity of the country’s grape crop. Both are symptoms of an industry which has grown faster than the availability of grafted rootstock and virus indexed vines (see indexing). Strict quarantine is of course enforced, and easily enforceable, on imported plant material.