User:ArcadiYay/sandbox

Perry pears are said to originate from the hybridization of the wild pyrus pyraster and the domestic pear p. communis. The first record of pears used for perry dates around the fourth century CE by Saint Gerome, who referred to perry as piracium. These pears were picked from the wild, and over time farmers identified their regional pears that they preferred for perry making. In the 1800s, researchers identified and described these regional pears into specific varieties, which are still used to this day. Since then, cultivation of pears has become more modernized, but is a difficult crop to grow. Pear trees, both domestic and perry varieties, grow incredibly slow, taking up to, if not over, a decade before they bear enough fruit for harvest. Considering how long it takes for pear trees to grow and mature enough to have harvestable crops, they can be difficult to manage against diseases. Their size makes it difficult to apply pesticides, which makes preventing fire blight, a disease caused by the bacterium erwinia amylovora that pears are even more susceptible to than cider apples. These difficulties, along with demand for perry pears having (until recently) taken a decline, had prompted a national collection of perry pear cultivars to be gathered, housed, and cared for at the Three Counties Agricultural Showground at Malvern in Worcestershire, UK to maintain genetic resources, which has now become the National Perry Pear Centre. Similar germplasm repositories can be found at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis, Oregon These varieties are different from dessert pears because of their astringency and bitterness that is needed to make perry