Shinko - General Fruit Growing

Just picked my first shinko Asian pear of the year. It was small, I should have thinned more. It’s been dry also , but a very nice sweet flavor. I thought last year it was good but confirmed this year for me. Crispy but not bland with nice sweetness.

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I’ve eaten a couple of pears so far this year that turned prematurely and found due to the extreme drought and heat they are delicious. Pears are about half the normal size or smaller this year. There is a little time left for the main crop but the fruits will not gain a lot of size at this point. @Derby42 I don’t think it was lack of thinning that made your pears smaller than average but rather strictly dry weather. Shinko will likely taste it’s best this year if your weather has been somewhat similar. The Kansas fruit this year though in small amounts has been the best tasting fruit I’ve ever eaten! How did your grafts turn out?

Hopefully next year so We all can see what the fruit taste and looks like.

Yulu Hybrid Fragrant pear

“Yulu Fragrant pear is a hybrid of Snowflake pear and “Ku er le” Fragrant pear. “ Ku er le” is a name of one location in Xinjiang, most probably the original place that produced the pear.”

Snow flakes Asian pear

Ku er le, AKA Korla Fragrant pear, Or just Fragrant pear at the Asian Market

The bark grafts sure are vigorous growers.

Tony

Tony,
You got the wrong picture of Kuerle Fragrant pear.

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Yulu Fragrant pear

You can see Yulu Fragrant pear is more close to kuerle
Fragrant pear since Kuerle Fragrant pear is the mother of Yulu. Snowflake pear is the father.
The taste of Yulu is also more close to Kuerle Fragrant pear, but better than its mother. Bigger size, more edible part.

Our Shinko (chosen for presumable fireblight resistance) had a lot of hail damage this year so only a few fruit made it to ripeness - in stark contrast to previous years since this fully grown tree is usually quite loaded. (Also the bees work it a lot despite not liking the pear family that much in general.)

However - those few that did make it really became fully, thoroughly ripe since I’ve failed to notice that they are even there. And so they developed an additional taste note of rum… Heavenly

Abstract

‘Korla’ fragrant pear (Pyrus sinkiangensis T.T. Yu) variety has shown severe coarse skin in recent years. The intrinsic quality of its coarse fruit shows an increase in the number of stone cells and poor taste. In this study, stone cells and the cell wall of coarse pear (CP) and normal pear (NP) during various development stages were compared using paraffin-sectioning and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the relationships between lignin-related genes and stone cell formation and cell wall thickening were also analyzed. Our results show that giant stone cells are formed and distributed in the core of pear, whereas many of these crack 60 days after flowering (DAF). The period of stone cell fragmentation occurs later in CP fruits than in NP fruits. Parenchyma cell wall development in CP and NP fruits varies from 120 DAF to maturity. The parenchyma cell wall of CP fruits thickens, whereas that of NP fruits is thinner during the same period. The expression pattern of five genes (Pp4CL1-l, PpHCT-l, Pp4CL2-l, PpPOD4, and PpPOD25) coincides with changes in stone cell content in the pulp. Correlation analysis demonstrates a significant correlation between stone cell content and the expression level of the five genes (ρ < 0.05). In addition, the expression of those five genes and PpCCR1 genes in CP fruits significantly increases during maturation and is highly correlated with the thickness of the parenchyma cell wall. The aim of this work is to provide insights into the mechanism of stone cell and parenchyma cell wall development in pear fruits and identify important candidate genes to regulate the quality of fruit texture using bioengineering methods.

‘Korla’ fragrant pear is a famous pear species that has been cultivated in China for more than years. It is generally favored by consumers because of its distinctive aroma, sweet taste, juiciness, unique shape, and bright colors (Gao et al., ). It has been nominated as a geographic indication product by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. However, in recent years, coarse ‘Korla’ fragrant pear has been frequently observed in the production area. The intrinsic qualities of coarse fruits include light taste, low sugar content, higher acidity, more stone cells, and poor taste (Ma, ). Coarse ‘Korla’ fragrant fruits began to appear rough-skinned or exhibit hard end symptoms 90 DAF and can be divided into three phenotypes: rough-skinned fruit, hard end fruit, and mixed type at maturity. Previous studies have shown that hard end is a pear fruit disorder in which the tissue of the calyx end of the ripe fruit is hard and dry (Ogawa and English, ). The disorder has been reported primarily in most of the European cultivars, such as Bartlett, Anjou, and Winter Nelis (Pierson et al., ; Yamamoto and Watanabe, ). Possible causes of hard end disorder in pear fruits include water stress, lignin accumulation, and calcium deficiency (Lu et al., ; Welsh, ). The disorder significantly affects fruit flavor and consumer acceptance (Rose et al., ).

Previous studies have reported that the diameter and density of stone cell mass are larger at the calyx end of coarse pears than normal pears during the maturation stage, and the shape of parenchyma cells around the stone cells in coarse pear differs from normal pears (Ma, ). Stone cells are a type of sclerenchyma cells formed by the secondary thickening of cell walls, followed by the deposition of lignin on the primary walls of parenchyma cells. In pears, stone cells in the fruit flesh are an important determinant of fruit texture (Tao et al., ) and distributed in the pulp in either the isolated or aggregated forms. The development of stone cells mainly depends on the synthesis, transfer, and deposition of lignin (Cai et al., ). In hard end pear fruits, the number of stone cells and lignin content are higher, which results in greater firmness and lower market value, suggesting that the hard end disorder in pear fruits is caused by abnormal lignin accumulation (Cai et al., ; Passardi et al., ; Veitch, ). The size and shape of parenchyma cells around the stone cells are related to the texture of pear flesh (Gu et al., ).

Lignin synthesis involves biosynthesis of lignin precursors, their transport to the cell walls, and polymerization. Lignin is a complex phenolic polymer mainly derived from ρ-coumaryl alcohol, coniferyl alcohol, and sinapyl alcohol (known as monolignols) (Barros et al., ; Boerjan et al., ). In the lignin biosynthetic pathway, four-coumarate: CoA ligase gene (4CL) plays multiple roles in plant growth and development by catalyzing the formation of a CoA ester. As a key enzyme involved in the biosynthetic pathway, 4CL is a plant-derived phenylpropane derivative and is related to the synthesis of flavonoids and lignin. The gene family encoding these enzymes comprises multiple isoforms of 4CL, which are potentially associated with diverse and unknown functions (Costa et al., ; Gui et al., ). Shikimate hydroxycinnamoyl transferase (HCT) is an enzyme involved in the monolignol pathway, catalyzing the reactions both immediately preceding and following the insertion of the 3-hydroxyl group into monolignol precursors (Hoffmann et al., , ). Cinnamoyl-CoA reductase (CCR) is the first enzyme specific to the monolignol pathway (Lacombe et al., ). Class III peroxidases (CIII Prxs) are primarily considered as secreted/apoplastic/CW proteins (Welinder, ), although vacuolar isoforms exist (Carter et al., ). The complex roles of CIII Prxs could be explained according to the diversity of their substrates and the spatiotemporal regulation of their expression. Thus, their functional analysis remains a challenge.

Consumers mainly eat the middle part of the fruit pulp. However, information on the cell structure and the molecular mechanism in the middle pulp of coarse ‘Korla’ fragrant fruit during development is limited. In the present study, stone cell development and distribution and cell wall thickening in the middle pulp of CP (rough-skinned fruit and hard end fruit mixed-type) and NP fruits were monitored and compared during fruit development. The relationships between lignin-related genes and stone cell formation and cell wall thickening were investigated. Our results provide insight into the mechanism of stone cell and cell wall development in pear fruits and identify important candidate genes that regulate the quality of fruit texture using bioengineering methods.

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