Kiwifruit species experimentation is always underway, but there is now a fairly vast amount of information about the different hardy kiwi varieties that we can read about:

Arctic Beauty: This is not really a variety, but the common nake for Actinidia kolomikta, which is known to be quite difficult to establish

Ananasnaya: the word comes from Russian “like a pineapple”, and is commonly referred to as “Anna”. This variety produces a good-smelling, sweet-tasting fruit, with a green skin that turns purplish in the sun. This is pretty much the gold standard in fruit-bearing kiwis

Dumbarton Oaks: A good-tasting kiwifruit species named after a public garden where it was growing as an old vine and where the first plants were propagated from

Geneva: This variety also has a good taste, but ripens quite earlier relatively to the Issai or Anna varieties

Issai: This is a non-pollinating, self-fertile variety from Japan. It is not very vigorous and tends to produce small fruit (but with a good flavor). The fruit ripens is an unpredictable and uneven fashion. The yield can also be enhanced by pollinating it with a male plant’s pollen. It has been shown to not produce well in Pennsylvania

Meader: Conventional pollinating species, of which only the female bears fruit.