Pear Harvest Part 2

Pear Harvest Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. The 2010 pear harvest is underway after the weather has kept things on hold for the last couple of weeks. Dennis James, Marketing Director for Pear Bureau Northwest says that while it hasn't hurt the pears to hang a little longer it really doesn't help either. JAMES: Because so many of the pear varieties don't ripen on the tree certainly you'll get a little better sizing as the pears are on the tree. Additional sugars, I would think it would be marginal because pears when they ripen up you get the sugars fully converting. A lot of fruit as it hangs on the tree will continue to ripen but James says that's not the right way to ripen pears. JAMES: Leave it on that tree and you've got a very firm piece of fruit. You take it off the tree and you've got after a cold storage some wonderful opportunities to ripen it up and that's one of the things that I think is a wonderful growing opportunity for the northwest pear community is that pear ripening as a program similar to the banana program are really coming forward at this point. It's easy to ripen fresh pear by placing them in a paper bag and leaving them on the counter for a couple of days. They are also pushing the "Check the Neck" way of determining if a pear is ready to eat. JAMES: The ripe program and getting the customer engaged is just really going to add another dimension of growth potential in not only the domestic markets but in the international markets as we move forward. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.