South Africa: New Celina pear variety "a winner" - FreshFruitPortal.com

South Africa: New Celina pear variety "a winner"

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South Africa: New Celina pear variety "a winner"

A South African fruit marketer has high expectations for a new early season blush pear variety, which is anticipated to make a strong impact in international markets. pear 2

The StarGrow Group owns exclusive rights to the Celina pear in South Africa, having received a sublicense from Belgium-based Fruithandel Wouters and ABCz, which hold the global rights.

The cultivar was first bred by Norwegian plant breeder Graminor and Swedish university SLU Balsgård.

"We are very, very excited," commercial manager Andries van der Westhuizen told www.freshfruitportal.com.

"You don't know what you don’t know, but from what we know now, it’s a winner beyond anything we’ve seen."

The pear has a green background color, which the representative said was attractive to many markets, along with a red blush and dark lenticel spots, resembling the popular Forelle cultivar.

Van der Westhuizen said while the pear was 'juicy and had a nice flavor', its taste was not its distinguishing feature.

"What's nice about it is that, like other summer pears, when they're picked they're already sweet. Compared to pears like Packhams and Forelle, for instance, when you pick them they don’t taste good at all. Their sugars only develop after cold storage," he said.

"Celina is a summer pear type so it eats sweet off the tree already, which is nice because it’s an early variety and so you don’t have to store it.

"Another difference from some other pear varieties is that they are often known for having a poor shelf life. We kept Celina in RA [regular atmosphere] for five months and it was absolutely fine. So it’s got an exceptional shelf life."

The export focus will likely follow in the path of other pears shipped by Stargrow, which typically involves around two-thirds sent to the EU, Russian and U.K. markets, 20% to the Middle East, and much of the remainder destined for Far Eastern markets like Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Van der Westhuizen also mentioned blush pears do really well in China, and so some volumes would undoubtedly be sent there if market access was gained in the future. The Asian country opened its doors to South African apple imports in December last year.

pear 1"We will be sending a trial pallet here and there to different markets, with most of the early volume going into the EU and U.K. markets," he said, adding the first commercial volumes were due to be shipped from the country in January 2017, with test trees first having been planted in 2007.

"But we'll see, different markets will take different sizes, different grades, different color specifications."

The representative expressed no concern over potential competition in the European markets around the time of the year when the Celina pear will be exported, saying the market for pears of this color was almost 'completely empty'.

"The EU doesn’t really have blush pears, mainly because most of our blush pears can’t be grown there due to fire blight, which is not present in South Africa," he said.

"There’s now the Sweet Sensation variety that’s grown there, and then there’s Celina, but until they have significant volumes of Celina, and so much so that they want to store it in CA [controlled atmosphere] for that time of the year to market it then, I don’t foresee that changing. The market’s going to be very empty."

The Celina variety also does not have a high chill requirement, which according to Van der Westhuizen means it will be suited to most of South Africa's pear-growing areas.

In addition, the representative said that unlike other varieties, Celina did not lose its blushed red color even in the hot summer January days when the fruit is harvested.

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