ASHS 2024 Conference

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agriculture Research Service (ARS) has operated a European pear (Pyrus communis) scion breeding program for over a century. The breeding program started in the early 1900s by Merton B. Waite in the Washington D.C. area with the primary objective to develop host resistance to fire blight, a devastating disease caused by Erwinia amylovora. The USDA pear breeding program has continued this effort throughout its history, spanning over six generations of breeders and two cooperative research programs in Michigan and Ohio. The program has released ten named pear varieties, with the first one, 'Waite,' being released in 1938 and the most recent, 'Bell,' in 2022. In this presentation, we discuss the program's history by detailing each generation of breeder(s) aims, their parental selection, and releases. In addition, we present corrected pedigrees for important breeding lines and the releases. Lastly, we present the current objectives of the program, the pedigree complexity of newly generated populations, and the overall success of the program’s primary breeding goal – fire blight resistance.