SOME PROMISING NEW PEAR STOCKS 
BEVERLY T. GALLOWAY 
Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, Washington, D. C. 
RACTICALLY all of our im- 
portant cultivated fruit crops, 
the apple, pear, plum, cherry, 
peach, prune, apricot, and nec- 
tarine, are in a sense parasites, for 
they must get their life and sustenance 
from special roots selected and provided 
by man. These roots are known as 
stocks, and millions of them are im- 
ported every year and used by nursery- 
men in the conduct of the largest busi- 
ness of its kind anywhere in the world. 
There are between five and six million 
acres of bearing apple, pear, and cherry 
trees in this country, and all but an 
insignificant portion are being fed and 
supportea by roots having their origin 
in far-away France or Italy. 
We are interested at this time in 
pear stocks, stocks coming from free- 
seeding, stabilized species; stocks that 
will grow vigorously throughout our 
principal pear-growing sections; that 
may be economically and easily pro- 
duced by nurserymen; that will not 
leaf-blight; that are highly resistant 
to fire-blight; that will produce a large 
percentage of No. 1 trees in the nur- 
sery; that may be budded any time 
from June to September, and that will 
give a long-lived tree. 
WHY NEW TYPES ARE NEEDED 
During the past fifteen years the 
Office of Foreign Seed and Plant 
Introduction, in the United States 
Department of Agriculture, has in- 
troduced a good many pears—somewhat 
over 350, in fact. During the past 
two years special attention has been 
given to a restudy of these introductions 
with a view to ascertaining their value: 
(1) for stocks; (2) for breeding purposes, 
that is, their use as a means of securing, 
through breeding, new types of pears; 
and (3) their use and value as new or 
fruiting types just as they were in- 
troduced. 
The number of pear trees of all ages 
in this country is probably not far 
from twenty-five million. The total 
acreage and production of pears has 
remained more or less constant for the 
past eight or ten years. “While the 
acreage and production have remained 
constant, this is only made possible by 
extensive new plantings each year. 
Fire-blight is the great bane of the pear 
in this country. From four to five 
million young trees must be raised 
each year to meet the losses caused by 
fire-blight and the normal increases of 
orchard extension. Fully 90% of all 
our pear trees are grown on French 
seedlings. The production of these 
seedlings from the common wild pear, 
Pyrus communis, has long been an 
important horticultural industry in 
France. 
No systematic attempt has been 
made, so far as we are aware, in this 
or any other country to secure new 
types of pear stocks suitable for special 
needs and particular places. Nor has 
any serious attempt been made _ to 
study the larger question of congenzality. 
We know that the same variety of pear 
behaves differently on different types 
of stocks. These differences are more 
marked in the case of different species, 
but they are also noticeable where 
seedlings of the same species are used. 
Much work, therefore, remains to be 
done to find the best stocks for particular 
varieties of our cultivated pears and 
stocks best suited to particular regions, 
soils and climates. 
CHINA’S ABUNDANT STOCK MATERIAL 
The Orient, and particularly China, 
seems to offer the most fruitful field 
for new pear stocks. China is pecu- 
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