09/26/08 How are the Pears?

How Are the Pears? I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Pear harvest is really starting to crank up here in the northwest according to Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest. MOFFITT: We're finishing up the Bartlett harvest. Pretty well completed that and they're getting into the winter pear varieties. A lot of people are already into D'Anjou, Comice is in full swing and also the Bosc. In the supermarkets were seeing a pretty full array of all of the varieties, even the D'Anjou's already this year. As with all the other fruit crops, early weather had some impact on pear crop. MOFFITT: The cool spring, we had some freeze damage as well and basically that reduced the crop in size from last year but last year was a pretty big crop. It was our third largest in our history. So we're definitely down from that year, last year but also we're off of a 5-year average as well. Even with the reduced overall crop, Moffitt sees plenty of pears for both domestic and import markets this year. And what about the size & quality? MOFFITT: Interestingly enough from reports I've been hearing the sizes are dependent on the variety which is a little strange. Usually they all  not usually but quite often they all follow the same pattern across all varieties. And in terms of grade I think we'll probably have some marking because of the freeze damage but nothing drastic so I think we're looking to another pretty good year. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.