Taewa elusive this year

massey-university

Thu Apr 26 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Taewa elusive this year

Thursday, 26 April 2007, 5:04 pm
Press Release: Massey University

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Volunteers digging their fingers through the dirt in search of taewa were not well-rewarded with crops, but working in the late summer sun under a clear blue sky was more than enough for the 50 or so who assembled to harvest the Mäori potatoes. Researcher in indigenous horticulture Nick Roskruge knew already that the harvest would not be huge, with wet weather prior to Christmas and a cool early summer contributing to the low yield from the 0.4ha of planting at the Palmerston North campus.

“It’s not a good year … a lot of the seed just didn’t come to anything.”

Kelly Potatau-Giddens is among year 10 students from Turakina Mäori Girls’ College working on site, after the college became involved in the harvest last year. Searching for the taewa, which are smaller than introduced varieties of potato, is “a bit like looking for hidden treasure”, she says.

“We’re having a bit of a competition to see who can get the most - so far we’re on our sixth basket. It’s really fun when you come across big groups of them.”

Mr Roskruge’s project has been running for several years, with the intention of building a seed-bank of taewa and supplying seed to enable community cropping. After a hangi tonight and selecting which taewa would be kept for seed stock, the rest were to be distributed to marae and other community groups. The taewa grow at about 17 tonnes/ha compared to a yield of 70 tonnes/ha for non-native potatoes.

A high resolution image is available by emailing d.wiltshire@massey.ac.nz.
Caption: Stacey Te Huia (left), Hani Morrell-White and Kelly Potatau-Giddens (right) are among those searching for taewa.

ENDS

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