Australia: The key to boosting Conference pear consumption

How’s the new Conference pear crop looking in Belgium? Have weather conditions been a challenge so far this year? Marc Evrard: Every season has its challenges. Obviously, this season is no different. It’s still one and a half months before we commence with our Conference pear harvest. There will be some Corina a few weeks earlier, but the main crop is Conference, and we predict harvesting to start around 20 August. We have had some challenges, but we’ve had multifarious challenges over the past years, or the past decade even, so it’s difficult to predict what else may happen in the next couple of months. We had a humid springtime, as well as abundant rainfall, which means that groundwater is up to the right level again, so there is ample water for the trees. This is excellent news for pears, although less good for cherries, which absorb all the water and can split and burst as a result. What about the issue of heat? Parts of Europe are getting quite accustomed to a yearly heat ...