THE BI-COLOURED PEARS ‘ROSEMARIE’ AND ‘FLAMINGO’: CHARACTERISTICS, PRODUCTION PROBLEMS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Soon after the introduction of the locally bred bi-coloured pear cultivars, Rosemarie and Flamingo, to the South African fruit industry during the early nineties, it became clear that these unique products require special horticultural inputs.
Due to the nature of these cultivars and consequent poor colour development, a very low percentage class 1 exportable fruit of only 30-35% was realised.
In this paper problems associated with production of the bi-coloured pears are discussed together with some possible solutions.
The main obstacles with these cultivars are insufficient red colour development on the fruit, rub marks and small fruit.
To overcome these problems plantings should be on a trellis system, North-South row orientation must be followed, fruit should be thinned to a single fruit per cluster, summer pruning should be done to optimise light penetration, tree vigour should be controlled by using dwarfing rootstocks, nitrogen fertiliser should be restricted and winter pruning should be limited.

VIII International Symposium on Pear

J.P. Human

anthocyanin, fruit colour, light penetration, pear cultivars, Pyrus communis, row direction, summer pruning

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2002.596.109