Convened by Dr. Stefano Musacchi, WSU hosted the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) XII Orchard Systems Symposium in July 2021. The symposium was virtual so Stefano and TJ Mullinax from the Good Fruit Grower filmed orchard visits where Stefano and producers provided industry overviews and discussed orchard systems and production strategies. Bob Gix, Rudy Prey, and Ray Schmitten are the hosts on the pear tour. Thank you to all the hosts. The videos were produced by the Good Fruit Grower Magazine.
Text Transcript and Description of Visuals
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| The logo for the Orchard Systems 2021 conference appears on screen, showing a fruit tree growing out of a test tube. | |
| Good morning, today we are in an orchard in Peshastin and I’m with Bob Gix. Bob Gix is a chair of the orchard committee for the pear, and has also been an expert on pear for many years. He was awarded with the silver pear in 2017, and he can address a lot of things about pear. | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of a pear orchard. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Bob Gix” as well as their current location: “Peshastin, Washington”. |
| Yeah, Washington and Oregon make up about two thirds of the pears grown in the United States. We’ve got about 30,000 acres of production between Oregon and Washington that represents about 500,000 tons. On an average, our overall yields are fairly low. They are somewhere between 16 tons per acre to 18 tons. That, for us, works out to something like 35 bins an acre, which is equal to about 35 tons per hectare. We’ve got about 800 growers, and that’s changing as growers consolidate and get bigger. And we hopefully can produce some of the best eating pears in the world. | A drone camera shot shows vast pear orchards in the foreground, with homes and steep hills in the background. |
| Bob, can you address a little bit, the variety that we are growing in Washington and Oregon? | |
| Sure, you know, our climate here is exceptional. We have a dry desert climate, we have warm days and cool nights. The valleys that the pears are often grown in have deep soils so there’s not a lot of stresses on those trees. And that allows us to grow a winter pear, like an Anjou. It grows a very smooth pear. Bloom comes fairly consolidated, and it allows a uniform harvest which allows for longer storage. We also grow Bartlett pears which the consumers really like. They deliver a nice in hand eating experience. And probably our third variety that we grow is a Bosc pear, and oftentimes those trees are mixed because we need a pollenizer to cross pollinate the varieties. | The shot changes back to Stephano and Bob standing in the orchard row. |
| Makes sense. About the strength and weakness in the industry, if you had to say one thing that could make our product recognized everywhere, what do you think? What is the most quality trait that you can define? | |
| Our biggest strength and our biggest weakness is the eating experience. Pear can be an amazing eating experience, but if people get a pear that doesn’t ripen, they might not buy a pear again. | |
| (faint bird sounds) | A drone camera shot shows vast pear orchards in the foreground, with homes and steep hills in the background. This is a transition between segments. |
| So we are in the farm of Rudy Prey who is here with me. He is another leading expert in pear, he is another silver pear awarded. And Rudy, we are in an orchard that we can say is traditional. So what is normally the distance between tree and row in a traditional orchard in our region? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of a pear orchard. Text on screen shows the name of the new guest: “Rudy Prey”. |
| Well this orchard traditionally was 20 by 20, and then we interplanted, so now it’s a 10 by 20. But in the old days there was orchards out there with rows that were even 30 feet wide, so you were getting less than 100 trees to the acre. | The camera moves slightly closer to frame Stephano and Rudy as they speak. |
| So you are remodeling somehow, your orchard, correct? So you are reducing the size of the tree also? And it is a 3D orchard and there are several leaders. So normal how many leaders do you want in an open canopy like this one? | |
| In a traditional orchard you’d normally have like 4 leaders, 4 to 5 leaders. | |
| Okay, and how do you handle the light, because light is very important. Are you performing summer pruning? What is your style of pruning, especially in winter? | |
| We’ve done definitely summer pruning, every year. It helps, not just for light by itself, but with the Anjou’s with the corking. And we’ve been a little more aggressive. The closer the trees come together, the more aggressive we are with cutting big limbs out, trying to keep smaller younger fruiting wood on the tree. | The camera zooms out slightly to show the canopies of the trees. |
| So what is the average yield that you can have in your orchard, the traditional one, I mean? | The camera moves slightly closer to frame Stephano and Rudy as they speak. |
| A traditional one, it somewhere varies between 50 to 60, sometimes 65 in a good year. It can be as low as 40 if the year is not so good. | |
| That’s still good. I see that the caliper of the trunk is really large, and probably is more related to the rootstock. So which rootstock are they? Those are probably seedling? | |
| These are probably Bartlett seedling rootstocks. These are trees that were planted, some of them, before I was even born, so they are quite old. And for being an old, traditional orchard, these are not big trees. I have orchards that have trunks three times the size of these, and those trees are two or three times as big. | Stephano and Rudy glance around at the trunks of the trees. |
| They look really nice. One more thing, so how do you irrigate this traditional orchard, because I see that you have some drip line. Are you localizing the irrigation, or are you also using sprinklers or overhead systems | The camera mores down to view the black drip irrigation tubing which sits on the ground along the row of pear trees. |
| So in the springtime, we use on drip irrigation. Drip is also very compatible with fertigation at the same time. Then as we get closer to the middle of June or July, we start relying more and more on the overhead sprinklers for keeping the grass growing, helping out with some of the pests that we have, and just keeping the orchard a little bit cooler. | The camera shot moves back to frame Rudy and Stephano as they speak. |
| This is great, and what is the kind of nutrition plan that you use? How many units of nitrogen are you using? | A wide drone camera shot shows a vast orchard growing on the slope of a hill. Trees, homes, and mountains are seen in the background. |
| Most of the blocks we come through and we have a set amount of nitrogen depending on the size, the age of the tree, and the variety. Then we’ll usually come and do some hand fertilizing as far as weaker trees go and things like that. We also put some gypsum through the drip tubing as well to get a little sulfur. | The drone continues to advance slowly over the orchard. |
| Chlorosis here can be an issue? | |
| It can, we have a lot of heavy soils and low spots. When you have some cool springs with too much moisture, you can get some chlorosis in the trees. | |
| So now we are moving to a more new design of orchards, so a kind of novel orchard that Rudy has been developing for many years. So when did you start? | |
| I’ve been working on it for about 20 years now. | |
| Yeah, so you are the boss. So this is a good example of how you can combine the traditional orchards that are still efficient, like this one, with the new one which has been more recently planted. | |
| Good morning, we are at higher elevation now. You can probably see the Wenatchee River down below us, and we are in a high density planting orchard in Rudy Prey’s farm. | Stephano and Rudy stand in a pear orchard row. These trees are smaller, younger, and planted much closer together. |
| Rudy you planted this orchard probably 12 years ago. Tell us a little bit about the planting distance, the variety, the rootstocks, so how you envision this high density orchard. | The camera shot moves closer to frame Rudy and Stephano as they speak. |
| So this orchard actually existed from trees that I had left over and had no place to go with. So we had to plant them a little tighter than we wanted. The spacing is 18 inches 14 feet, which is about 2,000 trees to the acre. They’re Bartletts, and Concords for pollenizers. | |
| And you are bending trees on each side of the row, so you are envisioning a V-shaped training system and an angled canopy? | Stephano gestures to the trees, which are bent left and right in an alternating pattern, forming a V shape with their trunks. |
| That’s correct. | |
| How tall do you want to go with the tree normally? How many feet are you planning to go high? | The camera pans upwards to show the full height of the trees. |
| Originally we wanted it where we could work the tree with an eight foot ladder, but we’ve kind of let that get a little out of hand. You can do some of them with eight feet, but most of these trees are pushing somewhere close to 10 to 12 feet. So we are working them more with a 10 foot ladder. | |
| So what is the distance between the row? | |
| 14 feet. | |
| 14 feet, and you are in a slope. What is the kind of orientation that you have? You are not North South in this case? | |
| No, I am more West East. I’m having the sun come up in the north, shining on the canopy from the North side. Then during mid-day it shines right down the middle of the canopy, and when the sun sets its coming from the south against the other side of the canopy. | |
| And you are dealing with the topography of the soil that is quite sloped here. Did you face any issue farming with this kind of slope? | The camera moves slightly to show the steep slope of the orchard row, with Rudy standing upslope of Stephano. |
| It would have been more ideal to go straight up instead of having a side hill too, but when I planted it, I wanted to plant it for the sun penetration, so this is the way I went. Doing it now, I would probably not do it the same way again. I have a block across the road where we went straight up and down, opposite direction, and I think its working just fine. | Rudy gestures to an additional slope in the background. |
| So we see there is some growth here on these trees. Are you envisioning to use summer pruning to remove some of the suckers that we saw there? | The camera moves to frame Rudy and one of the trees as he looks at the sucker growth of the tree. |
| Yeah, all of our high density orchards that are close together and quite vigorous, we definitely want to come in the summertime. And we will come in and we will strip out any bit of new growth that’s in the middle of the tree. This would be all cut out in the winter anyways, so its much easier and quicker and cleaner to do it now. Plus you get the benefit of the light, you get better spray penetration, and the tree is just easier to work with. | Rudy grabs on of the new, green shoots from the middle of the tree and breaks it off. He then continues breaking off all of the new growth and tossing it aside. |
| I really like this pulling out the sucker because it is also avoiding that they start to grow again immediately because you are also removing the basal bud of the shoot. So this is really good. So how do you envision the pruning in winter here, because your trees are already closing a little bit. Are you envisioning to reduce a little bit, the size of the tree? | The camera moves backwards to frame both Rudy and Stephano as they speak. |
| These trees are all pretty much the height that we want. Anything that is growing taller now, we pretty much cut it off. We don’t want the trees crisscrossing on top. We don’t mind if they touch, but that’s about as close as we want them to get. | |
| And in terms of management, we saw before a traditional orchard. How do you deal with the nutrition? What is the main difference between the traditional orchard and this one? Are you more careful with the nitrogen application or something like that? | |
| Yeah, definitely because this is organic so its already a little bit harder to get nutrients. Most of our vigor comes because we are very aggressive with pruning in the wintertime. If we don’t eliminate enough limbs, pretty soon you have crowding, shading. So there’s quite a lot of pruning on these trees done every year, either with eliminating limbs, gone completely, or cutting them back and growing new ones for young budwood. | |
| A drone camera shot shows pear orchards in the foreground, with homes and steep hills in the background. This is a transition between segments. | |
| Now we are with Ray Schmitten, another person in the pear industry, another silver pear awarded person. And you have a multitude of roles in the pear industry, correct? You are a grower, but you are also involved in the research. You are the co-chair of the research committee on pear. And you have a traditional orchard in general? The layout is traditional? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of a pear orchard. Text on screen shows the name of the new guest: “Ray Schmitten”. |
| Yeah, we’ve stuck with traditional orchard, which we saw earlier in the video, 20 foot by 10, 20 foot by 20, low density. And as labor has become a problem, as pest control and the ability to get spray to the top of the tree has been a problem, we’re pushing our trees into a smaller framework, much like we are standing here. Not quite as high density. But the growers–I also work for a fruit warehouse co-op– all of the growers are faced with the same difficulties that I am. So we are moving our fruit production into smaller trees. | The camera moves slightly closer to frame Stephano and Ray as they speak. |
| And this brings us to the rootstock. So can you address a little bit, which are the most important rootstocks in our industry in Washington and Oregon. And what are the perspectives for the (indistinct)? | |
| Yeah, so traditionally we’ve used a lot of seedling Bartlett rootstocks throughout the industry. We’ve explored Old Home 97, 87, 333, many of the more dwarfing rootstocks. Which are only subtly dwarfing, maybe 20 percent, 15 percent. In our area where it gets very cold and we have some growing complexities, the 87 does produce quicker, and a smaller precocious tree. But we’ve had issues as the tree gets older with having pear decline come in. So we are still faced with not having the pear rootstock that we want that can continue into a 15 or 20 year old block, in our opinion. | |
| So, if I can add something, the pear industry here is based on pear rootstocks. So not like in Europe where they are using quince. What is your feeling about quince? So do you feel that we can test it here or that there are some environmental stressors of a really low temperatures in winter and really high temperatures in summer? You know, we are in a desert with a good river, and it brings us water, but we are still in such a stream zone of temperature. | |
| Yeah, we can still drop well below zero degrees Fahrenheit in the wintertime here. Most of the quince doesn’t do well in that, but we would like the precocity and the growth restraint of a quince that we see in Europe. | |
| And this brings us to the environmental situation that we are facing too. So if we try to go high density and reduce the size of the tree, probably we need to change completely the way we manage the tree in irrigation. And probably, if you reduce the size of your tree you could have issues with heat, temperature, or something like that. What is your feeling about that? | The camera zooms in closer on Stephano and Ray. |
| Yeah, so in the lower Wenatchee River Valley, we’ve experienced some of those problems where Anjou pears are really susceptible to high summer heat. They don’t do well from a fruit quality perspective. So we understand that, we’re seeing an increased problem with that. So as we are replanting those blocks from Anjou to Bartlett or another variety, we are concerned about that. We’re implementing drip irrigation systems that can keep our trees wet, get nutrients into them when we need them, and even possibly some overhead cooling as well as that helps us with pest control. We use overhead water as pest control with pear psylla in pears. | |
| Yeah, pear psylla is quite a problem. | |
| Yeah, it’s a real problem pest right now. | |
| And probably the small tree can also be managed better from the spray, correct? | |
| Yeah, anything labor and pest control, those two things… and production of course, having more production per acre, those three things are pushing the growers that direction, just like Rudy has done here. | Ray gestures to the high density orchard trees around them. |
| Thank you. Thank you very much. | A wide drone camera shot shows a vast orchard growing on the slope of a hill. Trees, homes, and mountains are seen in the background. This is a transition between segments. |
| We are here with Rudy Prey, Bob Gix, and Ray Schmitten, so three silver awarded pear people, very knowledgeable. And I have a single question for all of you: How do you envision the pear industry in 10 years from now? What is your idea? What are the changes that are going to happen in that time? | Rudy, Bob, and Ray stand in a line in the row of the high density pear orchard. They face Stephano as he speaks. |
| Well it’s definitely going to have to change, that’s for sure. I think there’s going to be some people going out of business. There’s going to be some consolidation between orchards. There’s going to have to be some modification of orchards to meet the labor needs that we have nowadays. I think we need to work on putting out a better, more consistent product that people want to buy. So I think those are all things that we can work on and change, but its just a matter of doing it because the competition is getting harder our there all the time. If we get left behind, this industry will go away, because the pear industry is a pretty small industry already. But I think that we still have a really unique product and we have a really unique location where we are growing it. We have a story to tell, and a location that goes with our product. I think that’s very important that we utilize that. | The camera shot moves to frame Rudy as he speaks. |
| Good point. And Bob, what is your vision about that? Where are we landing in 10 years from now? | |
| I think, ten years from now, we have a great opportunity to put a great product in front of the consumer. We need to work with both our imports and meeting that competition, and delivering a product that gives the customer what they want. I think that’s what generates sales. It allows growers to pay for the labor and the changes that they need to make. I think that’s a key part of it. | The camera shot moves to frame Bob as he speaks. |
| Great, and Ray, you are the last. | |
| I don’t have much more to say because these guys, basically, focused on the consumer and that’s what we have to do. From my perspective as an employee of a pear packing shed, we are really challenged by getting the right package out to the retailer, then out to the consumer. We want to entice that consumer to buy a pear rather than another fruit product. So that retailer wants the best package and the best edible product possible. So the challenge we have from the packing end, is having an eight or nine month product that is edible and in a package that can ship without problems. And we don’t know what box they want us to put it in in March when we are packing earlier in the year, so we have to extend our packing season on out so that we can pack on demand. And we have a difficulty with that. Pears have skin that is really sensitive, so when we roll them over the belts and through the packing line late in the season, they get scuffing and marked up. So that’s what I visualize, using technology to get to that point, to put it in the right package later, so the consumer will have a ready-to-be-wrapped product. | The camera shot moves to frame Ray as he speaks. |
| Thank you to all of you. I really enjoyed this conversation and visit. I hope that everyone around the world, depending on the time zone that you are, are enjoying the same. Thanks a lot. | A wide drone camera shot shows vast pear orchards with houses, trees, and mountains visible in the background. The logo for the Orchard Systems 2021 conference appears on screen. |
YouTube Video Link: Washington State Pear Production
