Innovation in pear management techniques

While most temperate fruit crops appear to undergo very dynamic changes in cultivars, rootstocks, yields, etc., pear seems to be the slow and least changing one. Opposite to other crops, whose yields have been steadily increasing over the last 50 years, pear shows very little variation in productivity over this timespan. Pear breeding has specific challenges, which are reflected in the comparatively low number of new cultivars released over the years. Pear genetics being more “static” than other species, in most pear growing areas a leading cultivar, or just a handful are grown and, in several cases, this number has decreased, such as in Italy, where about 70% of pear orchards are now represented by ‘Abbè Fetel’ alone. Case in point, their average yields are the same as those reported in the late 1940s for this cultivar, although rootstocks, training systems and densities may be quite different. To top it off, novel diseases and disorders have arisen, that also compound the problematic situation. However, this needs changing, if growers' bottom line is to be preserved. Pear lends well to training according to novel 2-D orchard designs, is amenable to mechanical pruning, and could benefit from other innovative orchard management techniques that are applied to apple and/or peach, in the context of Precision Orchard Management. These include autonomous vehicles, fixed point spraying systems, IoT configuration of irrigation/fertigation systems, stronger and wider connections between pre- and postharvest, including the use of Artificial Intelligence applications.