Old Pear Varieties in Northern Italy

At the Department of Vegetal Production of the University of Milan there is the largest Italian collection of fruit models, amounting to about 1700 pieces, most of which were modelled and moulded in the second half of the Ninteenth Century by an ingenious artist and pomologist: Francesco Garnier Valletti. As many as 309 of these are models of different pear varieties. With other 231 models from different sources, about five hundred pear varieties are represented. This collection shows the great number of pear varieties grown in Northern Italy 150 years ago. In the same period, Burdin Nurseries published a catalogue with more than 250 commercial pear cultivars and, in the year 1901, the pomologist Girolamo Molon grew more than 300 pear cultivars in the experimental field of the Royal High School of Agriculture in Milan. Nowadays, the number of pear varieties commercially grown in Italy is very limited, as more than 70% of total annual pear yield is due to only four cultivars ('Conference', 'Abbé Fètel', 'Beurrè Bosc', 'Doyenne du Comice'). The renewed interest in germplasm preservation has led public and private institutions to establish collections of old varieties, many of which are not identified or cannot be identified. One of these collections was established by the Lombardia Region at E.R.S.A.F. The comparison of the unknown fruits with the models of the Garnier Valletti collection, which reproduce not only the shape and colour, but also the size and the weight of the fruit, can be very useful for identifying the ancient varieties.