@brightabyss 2/ We've also spent a decade researching barely-known varieties of winter-pears at one of the world's largest and most diverse pear collections. Today, we gathered fruit from more than a hundred key candidates to track over forthcoming months. We know of no one else at such work.
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Chris Homanics and Nick Routledge with the Agrarian Sharing Network sitting on the tailgate of a truck at the USDA pear germplasm repository in Corvallis, OR, among bags of the more than 100 unique winter pear accessions collected from more than 1,000 named but little-researched pear varieties there.
2/ Two days ago, our fall research took us to another vast fruit collection central to our decades-long effort identifying 'future heirlooms' - the USDA pear repository in Corvallis, OR, home to ca. 1,000 named pear varieties. Then, with friends, a tasting.
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Image of a broad diversity of peas arranged on a cutting boards, prior to tasting.
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Image of a written map of names of the pears arranged on the cutting board.