17 most fireblight resistant pears according to KRISTINE LOFGREN

[clarkinks]

This is overall a good list in my opinion. 17 of the Best Fireblight Resistant Pear Varieties | Gardener’s Path

" 17 OF THE BEST FIREBLIGHT RESISTANT PEAR VARIETIES

June 19, 2024 by Kristine Lofgren

Fireblight is a terror. It’s a bacterial disease that infects pears, plums, apples, and other fruit trees, transforming your plant from a luscious, productive specimen to an oozing, shriveled, blackened mess. And forget about enjoying any of the fruits.

Fireblight is caused by the bacteria Erwinia amylovora and is one of the most devastating diseases of pears.

When conditions are right for the bacteria, this disease can completely decimate an entire orchard in a single season.

It originated in North America and has spread to the rest of the globe, leaving experts scrambling to find and breed trees that can withstand the effects of infection.

Plant breeders have been successful and we have quite a few options now that are able to resist infection. This doesn’t mean the tree is completely immune to the bacteria, it can still become infected, but symptoms are significantly reduced.

Here are the pear varieties worth looking at if you want to avoid fireblight:

17 Fireblight-Resistant Pear Varieties

1. Ayers

2. Blake’s Pride

3. Elliot

4. Farmingdale

5. Harrow Delight

6. Hood

7. Kieffer

8. Magness

9. Maxine

10. Moonglow

11. Orient

12. Potomac

13. Seckel

14. Shenandoah

15. Shinko

16. Tyson

17. Warren
    "

"

KRISTINE LOFGREN

Kristine Lofgren is a writer, photographer, reader, and certified Master Gardener with Oregon State University. She was raised in the Utah desert, and made her way to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two dogs in 2018. Her passion is focused these days on growing ornamental edibles, and foraging for food in the urban and suburban landscape."

[marknmt]

@clarkinks

It’s a bacterial disease that infects pears, plums, apples

Plums? I thought stone fruit were exempt but a quick search gets a few mentions of fireblight in plums. Could somebody please clarify?

[LarisaLee]

It’s SUPPOSED to only infect pomiferous fruits but in the last several years some stone fruits have been affected, too, according to the manager at Home Orchard Society. I think it was that much wetter and hotter than normal in the PNW. I don’t know about the rest of the country.

The PNW also had more anthracnose, and cytospora and pseudomonas cankers in the last couple years.

Here’s something on cytospora:

Peach (Prunus persica)-Cytospora Canker

Someone was talking about stone fruit with cicada damage in another forum. My guess is that an insect caused the initial damage and a bacterial disease took advantage of it.

I think pseudomonas can look a lot like fireblight. I had a couple cherries that I was sure died off due to fireblight, but I dug them up and disposed of them before I knew pseudomonas was even a thing. So I may have been wrong.

Cummins on pseudomonas: Pseudomonas - Cummins Nursery - Fruit Trees, Scions, and Rootstocks for Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums, Peaches, and Nectarines.

[clarkinks]

@marknmt

The newer fireblight strains are wreaking havoc In Kansas.

[Richard]

@clarkinks
I think she scooped you, then found some vendors and copied their information. She clearly hasn’t grown them.

[marknmt]

Are the newer FB strains affecting plums, or just pomes?

[Richard]

@marknmt

FB strains affecting plums

A few years ago, a plant pathologist from UC Riverside told me that FB does not infect Prunus, but there are several other blights that do.

[dannytoro1]

Thanks for the list. Was just shopping for new pear trees today. Came home with strawberries, Blue Java Banana and a pair of Florida King Peaches.

The only pears the many nurseries had were Oriental which we do not care fore. Or Keiffer. 3 of which were absolutely burned to a crisp down in to the ground in record time. By fireblight and all the little Shepard hooks and blistered’ cracking bark wounds.

[rubus_chief]

She left Bell off the list and some of the other Harrow pears
Elliot gets some or all of its FB resistance from Seckel (its grandparent) and maybe its other unknown parent
Alexander Lucas is another that some of us are trialing as well

[Fusion_power]

I have 15 of the 17 excepting Farmingdale and Moonglow. I’m not going to graft Moonglow because it seems to have lost most of its fireblight tolerance over the last 5 years.

She is missing Bell, Beierschmitt, Alexandre Lucas, Clark’s Yellow, Ewart, Le Conte, Leona, and a few others less well known.

[JesusisLordandChrist]

Thanks for the list Clarkinks. I have a few growing on her list.

[Gkight]

David the good always talks about a “sand pear” which I’m sure is a general branch of pears and not a variety. Do you know any examples of this type of pear he may be talking about? You have the most extensive pear knowledge I can think of on the forum

[Phlogopite]

That’s just another name for Asian pears (Pyrus pyrifolia)
Per wikipedia

The tree’s edible fruit is known by many names, including Asian pear, Persian pear, Japanese pear, Chinese pear, Korean pear, Taiwanese pear, apple pear, zodiac pear, three-halves pear, papple, naspati and sand pear.

[Fusion_power]

No, sand pear is not actually P. pyrifolia. China is home to at least 13 identified species of pears and may have more which have not yet been described. I can only name 4 off the top of my head: P. pyrifolia, P. bretschneideri, P. ussuriensis, and P. calleryana. Here is a description of commercial cultivars with a bit of species info.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242651130_The_Pear_industry_and_research_in_China

I’ve read literature from the early 1900’s which suggests “sand pear” is a small to medium fruit with lots of grit cells on a moderately hardy tree with very good fireblight tolerance. Take that with a grain of salt because the descriptions are not consistent and may even be of 2 or 3 different species. Le Conte is a variety which was commercially important 100+ years ago. It is described as a hybrid between a sand pear and a European pear.

[Phlogopite]

Thanks for the correction. Do we know if modern “Asian pears” are a complex hybrid between multiple wild species?

[Fusion_power]

If anything, it is more complicated. Chinese pears generally are described as species and sub species with P. ussuriensis and P. pyrifolia considered to be progenitors. Geographic isolation for millennia resulted in divergence sufficient to be described as separate species. I’ve only read a small amount of available information on pears from China. That said, several modern pears grown in China are known to be hybrids. As a recent example discussed on the forum, “fragrant” pears are known to be hybrids where European pears were used to bring more aroma into the offspring. It looks like P. bretschneideri (aka white pear) has been extensively crossed with P. pyrifolia to make commercial hybrids.

[sgld]

I’ve eaten a bunch of sand pears as a boy. They are hard and gritty but can be tasty. People mainly canned them when I was growing up

[dannytoro1]

Sand Pears are lasting legacies of many of the abandoned homesteads here. They seem very resistant of fire blight.

As well many an old Leconte can be found long outliving the folks who planted them. Fact is while it is spoken of poorly for quality; it is an outstanding canning pear.

[Fusion_power]

They were called “sand” pears because of the large number of grit cells especially near the core. I suspect better canning pears are available, but a canning pear that will grow and produce abundantly in the southeast is not easy to find. If you run into “Fanstil”, it is a re-named “Le Conte”.

[dannytoro1]

Yes. Talking with the wife we will be getting a Honey Sweet for eating, a Shenandoah for dual use and LeContes strictly for canning. We know where there are plenty of places to dig up Sand Pears to add in.

I wonder if Sand Pear would make good rootstock ?