Blight-resistant pear variety gives hope to Ontario growers

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Harovin Sundown pear, which offers winter hardiness as well as fire blight resistance, is encouraging Ontario horticulturalists to rethink their attitudes to pear production

by SUSAN MANN

When Niagara-on-the-Lake fruit grower John Thwaites wanted to diversify his operation, the fire blight resistance of a new, Canadian-developed pear variety caught his attention.

Thwaites planted 4,000 trees of Harovin Sundown pear on four acres this spring and was installing trellises in mid-June to support the trees. The trees are growing well and he expects to have his first pear crop in four years.

He saw the variety growing in test orchards. "We had seen the fruit and it was a nice, clean, large fruit." Then, when he saw the new pear variety had fire blight resistance, "we got more interested and started looking at it a little more closely," he explains.

Thwaites grows peaches, nectarines, plums and wine grapes on several properties in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is his first time growing pears, although his dad grew them when Thwaites was a child.

He remembers fire blight affecting his dad's pear and apple trees. There weren't many pear trees on the farm and the problems weren't severe, but Thwaites recalls his dad losing a few trees and tree limbs because of fire blight.

David Hunter, Agriculture Canada tree fruits researcher, says that in total about 20 acres of Harovin Sundown pear trees were planted  in Ontario this spring. That's a better uptake than in previous introductions of a new variety. The plan is to have 200 acres in the ground within the next five years.

Hunter says fire blight is a bacterial disease to which pears are particularly susceptible. "It can cause shoot and even tree death, and the infection can quickly spread throughout and entire orchard. It's the major disease constraint to pear production in southern Ontario."

In addition to fire blight resistance, Sundown can resist temperatures as low as -29 C. The variety can be stored for as long as three months after harvesting and it yields 14 per cent more than Bartlett pears. The pear itself has light green skin, firm flesh and a unique sweetness.

Developed by Agriculture Canada, the Harovin Sundown pear was launched this May through a production and marketing agreement between Vineland Growers Co-operative and the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.

Hunter says Agriculture Canada's pear breeding program was established in the early 1960s with a mandate to develop pear selections and cultivars with fire blight resistance.

Out of the first crosses in the program between Bartlett and an American selection that had good resistance to fire blight, there were three selections that went into advanced testing and two were named. One was Harovin Sundown and the other was AC Harrow Crisp, which was released around 2000. Evaluations on the third selection out of that cross were discontinued because it didn't make the grade, Hunter says. The first crosses were made in 1962-63. Hunter is the fourth breeder in the program and has been the lead researcher since 1988.

Harovin Sundown was a cross between Bartlett and an American selection with good fire blight resistance. The cross was made in 1972 by Harvey Quamme, an Agriculture Canada researcher, Hunter says. From there it went through a greenhouse screening in 1973 for fire blight susceptibility and was planted in test orchards in 1974.

In 1979-80, it was picked to receive further evaluation. Hunter says that, after 10 years of testing, researchers were thinking of naming and introducing it in the marketplace in the 1990s. But program reviews at Agriculture Canada and a shift in the pear-breeding program (including the movement of an orchard) to Vineland from Harrow delayed the introduction of Harovin Sundown by eight to 10 years.

Hunter says the delay resulted in researchers doing more testing. "When it came time to introduce, we knew a lot more about it than we usually do when we introduce a new cultivar."

What's next for the pear-breeding program? Hunter says the program has fulfilled the original mandate to produce fire blight selections for the fresh market. But Agriculture Canada "has decided we're going to divert some of our resources into other breeding programs," he says, noting they'll be evaluating the material they have in hand. But it's anticipated "we will not be making crosses in the future for pear breeding purposes."

Jim Brandle, CEO of the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, says his organization's role is to get the variety out into the marketplace. The centre received global marketing and commercialization rights for Sundown in 2009. To stay competitive, the Canadian industry must develop new marketing alliances to secure premium markets and increase grower margins. The agreement between the growers' co-operative and the centre enables this to happen.

The marketing responsibility goes to the packers, who are able to grant exclusivity to certain grocery store chains. That helps keep the price up, he says, noting that the packers know how big the market is. "You can actually understand almost completely the number of trees that you must have in the ground and what price you're going to get."

The whole system gets pulled by the marketplace rather than being pushed by the producer, Brandle says. "We can go to farmers with a tree and a market instead of just a tree," Brandle says.

Michael Ecker, president of the grower co-op, says the new variety will boost Ontario's pear production. "We believe it is a leading edge product that can save the pear industry."

In the late 1990s, there were about 2,500 acres of pears in the province, but the acreage has dropped to just below 900 acres today. Ecker says there was a decline in pear production here because the canners closed, fire blight destroyed trees and it was challenging for farmers to grow pears economically because Ontario growers couldn't get the yields that farmers in California could.

"So now we've bred in some new life for our pear farmers and they're really excited about the pear," he says. BF