A new Samoan company has exported its first container of a new blight-resistant variety of taro to New Zealand.
Samoan taro has been absent from the New Zealand market since a taro blight in the early 1990s.
The co-director of P & A Trading Limited, Amy Schuster, says she's optimistic that its taro variety will be good enough to compete with Fiji and Tongan taro.
Amy Schuster says it was hard work to find the taro to meet New Zealand's quarantine requirements.
"The work now is to still keep on developing our farmers to have consistency, to have enough planting material because its a new breed of taro we are now shipping to New Zealand because of the shelf life and its more tolerant of the blight and we needed to get a better yield from what the farmers are planting."
Amy Schuster says more than 70 farmers have agreed to plant the taro for export
