Cold Snap™ pear – Winter’s Favourite Fruit™
The average Canadian consumes almost five pounds of pears every year. However, we now import more pears than we grow and currently, on average, only 10 per cent of pears consumed in Canada are grown locally.
In 2015, more than 78,000 metric tonnes of fresh pears (valued at $120 million) were imported into Canada. Most of the pears came from the U.S. (54 per cent). This wasn’t always the case. Pear production in Canada was thriving until the 1980s when it started to decline due to a number of factors including disease, conversion of farm land to housing and the increasing cost of labour. The collapse of the pear processing industry in 2008 further exacerbated the situation.
The Cold Snap™ pear was developed by plant breeders at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) over decades of crosses and selections. In 2009, AAFC licensed the Cold Snap™ pear to Vineland for global commercialization and a new business model with benefits for both growers and consumers was developed.
* Published 2016
