By Myrna Stark Leader
You’ve likely heard of, or eaten, Bartlett, Anjou and Bosc pears, varieties originated in the 1700 and 1800s in England, Belgium and France. However, there’s a new bred-in-Canada pear. The Happi Pear®, as it’s been trademarked, demonstrates the work and time required to create a new fruit variety and get it to you.
A stand-out pear variety for growers and eaters
The Happi Pear is a firm, yellow-green skinned fruit, some having a slight blush colour spot. Also known as research variety HW624, the pear is a cross between Harrow Sweet pear and a variety labeled NY10353. The cross was made at an Agriculture and Agri-food Canada fruit breeding research centre in Ontario back in 1988.
For consumers, the creamy white flesh is juicy, very sweet with a more complex flavour than some other pears. You can eat it fresh when ripe or when green for a crunchy, zesty taste or use it in cooking. For pear growers, the tree thrives well in cooler climates, produces large fruit and is resistant to the disease fire-blight and a pest called Pear Psylla. Both can seriously harm, if not destroy, a pear crop reducing some growers’ willingness to grow pear trees in Canada and other nations.
Unlike pear varieties named after a person, like Bartlett, HW624’s naming involved a marketing team, brainstorming, taste tests and research. The name is designed to catch your attention and ultimately increase Canadians’ and international consumers’ desire for pears – a fruit grown in B.C., Ontario and Atlantic Canada, but sometimes underrated and over-looked by fruit eaters.
“It’s like naming a child,” says Brianna Shales, Marketing Director for Stemilt Growers LLC, the U.S. fruit grower, packer and shipper responsible for commercializing the new pear. “A name may seem a little odd at first, but Happi is a short word, easily remembered. It makes sense in a variety of languages and is associated with a positive emotion, something we hope people feel when they taste this fruit.”
More than a name required
Naming is only one step in the complex process from making or discovering a new fruit cross to having enough of the fruit to supply grocery shelves. Happi Pear’s journey has spanned 40 years, the effort of plant breeders, researchers, growers, marketers, and fruit sellers in Canada and around the world.
The initial Canadian cross produced seeds that were germinated. Seedlings were planted and tested. Those with positive data were multiplied and grown again, testing the trees and fruit produced. Only the best plants’ seeds are selected to repeat the cycle. HW624 trees were planted in evaluation orchards in 1999. Trials in regional plots began in 2000.
“That’s where you can really make the decision – does this variety have enough positive attributes that we want to ask a commercial fruit farmer to invest in planting it?” explains Amanda Moen, Senior Business Advisor at Ontario’s Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.
Vineland helps move a new variety further along the development process. They received the rights to manage HW624 in 2013, a year after it was granted protection under the Canadian Plant Breeders’ Rights Act.
“We have plant variety protection for the same reason we have patents on other inventions,” explains Moen. “It’s a time limited monopoly which incentivizes innovation. It allows the plant breeder who invested time and money in developing something new to have a 20- to 25-year window to control replication of that invention.”
Through all of this, each group of trees grown are assessed for things like a consistent harvest window and producing fruit that can last in storage, as well as how they handle stressors like climate, disease and pests. Each cycle of growing and evaluation takes about eight years.
Vineland partnered with Washington State fruit grower and marketer Stemilt after an extensive worldwide search and competitive proposal process because it had the resources and expertise to manage introducing Happi Pear to U.S. and Canadian orchardists and consumers, then, eventually to the world under an innovative branded model.
Stemilt growers harvested their first test commercial crops in the U.S. in 2021 and 2022.
“We’ve gone through the whole process now in the U.S. so we now have a limited number of growers in Canada,” says Stemilt Research Development Director, Rob Blakey, “so by about 40 years later, we should start getting enough pears harvested for commercial volumes.”
No small achievement
“Every year, there’s a new iPhone, but it’s not quite the same when you think about the commercialization cycle for a fresh fruit,” says Nicole De Long, Vineland’s Director of Business and Client Development.
If they’re lucky, breeders of a specific fruit, like a pear, might see one or two new fruit varieties fully developed in their lifetime. Fourth-generation BC pear grower and packer Kevin Day understands that well.
“You plant pears for your heirs,” says the owner of Days Century Growers Inc. in Kelowna with a smile.
Image courtesy of Stemilt
In spring 2024, he and four other Okanagan growers, planted a total of 10,000 Happi Pear trees sourced from Stemilt. At a cost of about $10,000 per acre for trees alone, excluding irrigation and other infrastructure expenses, Day and other growers are experimenting with different tree planting configurations.
Day is pruning his baby trees to create a fruiting wall like a high-density apple orchard. This should allow more light to each fruit creating larger, perfectly coloured Happi Pears.
“I’ll probably pick a few (Happi Pears) for local sales maybe two years from now, but to have enough to supply retailers, it’s likely be eight years from now,” Day explains.
“What’s really exciting,” adds Moen, “is that we’re starting to apply the same innovation and interest we put to commercializing new apple varieties into pears. That opens the door to do the same in other crops, like peaches for example.”
Give pears a chance
So, even though Canadian-grown Happi Pear quantities will take a few more years, Day encourages people to try Canadian-grown pears. Bartletts are a yellow, soft, juicy pear best eaten fresh when ripe. The green Anjou is the staple pear grown in the Pacific Northwest, largely because this firmer pear stores well when refrigerated. Less ripe, it can be used in cooking in things like salads or on pizza but needs to be taken out of cold (the fridge) and ripened on your counter to get the best fresh eating flavour. Bosc pears are also tasty but tend to be harder.
