Gold kiwifruit

Gold kiwifruit or yellow kiwifruit refers to several kiwifruit cultivars with yellow flesh. They are grown from the species Actinidia chinensis - a close relative of Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa, the variety known for the green-fleshed 'Hayward' cultivar.

Some of the notable commercial gold kiwifruit cultivars include Hort16A, developed by the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1991 and first marketed internationally by Zespri International Ltd in 1997 as Zespri Gold; and Jintao, a Chinese cultivar selected in 1981 by the Wuhan Institute of Botany from wild plants in Wuning County, Jiangxi Province, which entered commercial production in China and Italy by 2001. Varieties such as Hort16A and Jintao are sweeter and more aromatic than the green-fleshed 'Hayward' cultivar, with smoother skin and less fuzz. However, yellow-fleshed cultivars generally have a shorter storage life compared to Hayward, which is more resilient during storage.

During the late 2000s and early 2010s, Hort16A kiwifruit orchards were impacted by the spread of a bacterial infection caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (commonly referred to as PSA), leading to significant losses of crop. In response, a new cultivar, Zesy002 (marketed as Zespri SunGold™) was chosen as a replacement less susceptible to PSA. By 2022, two-thirds of kiwifruit volume produced in New Zealand were for gold kiwifruit.