Most fresh pears nowadays are still grown on old trees in long-established orchards. But if, through research, the Pacific Northwest pear industry were able to start growing pears more efficiently in intensive orchards with trees on dwarfing rootstocks, would there be a market for all the additional fruit? “We’re limited now to where we grow pears and limited to the rootstock that we have,” Pat Burnett, a pear grower in Washington’s Wenatchee Valley, remarked during the Pear Bureau Northwest’s annual meeting last summer. “Most of our pear growers are raising pears on trees that are 40 years old. What happens […]