Ten Years Honing a Single Sword:

Driving along a secluded mountain road in Miaoli County’s Zhuolan Township, the road is lined on both sides with low Asian pear trees. The trees are covered with ochre, white, and silver bags that are there to protect the ‘Baodao Ganlu’ Asian pears (dubbed the Louis Vuitton of the pear world) from being gnawed by insects or pecked by birds.

Life of an Asian pear breeder

This Taiwanese-bred Asian pear variety took Liu Shenquan, now 74 years old, 22 years to develop. One of the few Asian pear cultivars bred independently by a pear farmer, it currently dominates the pear market in Taiwan. It has won popularity with consumers thanks to its large size and delicate flesh, and many pear farmers have switched over to growing it.

Earlier in his life Liu worked as a mechanic, repairing motorcycles and electrical appliances. Because he was constantly busy and was under a lot of stress, at age 38 he decided to buy a pear orchard, and that marked his entry into the world of Asian pears.

Asian pear trees grow best at low temperatures, and for pear scions (shoots with buds, used for grafting) to flower and produce fruit they have to be exposed to low temperatures for a sufficient length of time. Back in the day Taiwan depended on imports of pear scions from Japan or China, and farmers would graft these onto rootstocks of Hengshan pear, an Asian pear variety traditionally grown in Taiwan, as this was the only way to grow temperate-zone pears at low elevations.

However, the quality and supply of imported scions remained unreliable, and Liu thought that Taiwan should be able to produce its own scions, so he decided to dedicate himself to breeding work.

Lacking any plant breeding experience himself, Liu asked for help from the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, where he learned about fruit breeding. Moreover, he turned his entire orchard into an experimental farm. Using Xinxing pear trees as the maternal plants, he pollinated them with pollen from multiple varieties to produce seedlings, which he again grafted and screened. From among more than 1,000 different hybrids, he finally selected Baodao Ganlu.

For an Asian pear seedling to grow into a mature tree and begin fruiting takes seven or eight years. For a long time, Liu’s family depended entirely on the earnings his wife made working in the food and beverage industry. Then, on September 21, 1999, the Jiji Earthquake struck Central Taiwan.

Liu recalls that his house was split in half by the quake, and many of his pear trees had to be removed so the authorities could shore up a stream that ran in front of his house. For a while he thought about giving it all up, but he finally decided to persevere, and supported himself and his family by selling some of his land.

Today Liu’s pears are very popular, but the fact is that he almost missed out on discovering the Baodao Ganlu variety.

Liu Shenquan transformed himself from a motorcycle mechanic and appliance repairman to “Grandpa Pear,” dedicating more than 20 years of his life to breeding the Baodao Ganlu pear.

Lin Hsin-shan, chairman of the Integrated Agricultural Development Foundation, encouraged and assisted Liu Shenquan in acquiring plant variety rights for the Baodao Ganlu pear.

From cast-off to treasure

“Liu was going to discard Baodao Ganlu, but a friend who tried it told him how delicious it was, so he decided to select it,” says Lin Hsin-shan, former director of the Miaoli District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, who greatly assisted Liu in the process of applying for plant variety rights.

The Baodao Ganlu pear that Liu himself had sampled had been harvested 190 days after bud grafting, but the one his friend tried was harvested at 210 days. “If the time isn’t right the fruit won’t reveal its quality,” says Lin Hsin-shan. Fortunately Liu had not yet discarded the variety, and this stroke of luck is the reason why people say, “Ganlu pears are a gift bestowed by heaven.”

Liu Shenquan explains that the name Baodao Ganlu comes from the fact that the variety was bred in Formosa (baodao or “precious island” in Chinese), while the ripe fruit has the fragrance of sugar cane (gan) and its flesh is juicy and as sweet as morning dew (lu). The fruit has an average weight of one kilogram, while larger fruits can weigh three to five kilos. The flesh does not turn brown when cut, and the fruit can be kept in cold storage for four to six months without going bad.

In 2018, with the help of the Integrated Agricultural Development Foundation, Liu was awarded plant variety rights for Baodao Ganlu by the Council of Agri­culture (now the Ministry of Agriculture, MOA). He charges royalties of NT$50,000 per farmer for rights to use the variety for 25 years, and even supplies packaging bags printed with the Baodao Ganlu trademark.

Today more than 500 farmers are legally producing Baodao Ganlu pears, and the variety is estimated to have a 70–80% share of Taiwan’s Asian pear market.

The bags used for packaging Baodao Ganlu Asian pears are printed with their own registered trademark. (courtesy of Liu Hao-you)

The “guaranteed” Asian pear

Zheng Fengyuan, an Asian pear farmer in Taichung’s Houli District, previously grew tankan (a subtropical citrus fruit also known as the southern mandarin orange), but he was only earning an average of NT$1,000 per day. In 2019 he bought a license from Liu Shenquan and began growing Baodao Ganlu pears. Because the variety is easy to grow and care for and the market price is high, his son and his nephew both returned home to cultivate them. Zheng says that customers from Singapore and Hong Kong have inquired about importing his pears, and he plans to switch over his entire plot of nearly four hectares to growing Liu’s pears.

As for the money he had to spend on royalties, Zheng says: “Just by spending a small amount of money I can openly grow this variety. The royalties are simply a way of expressing the support and respect to which the breeder is entitled.”

Zhan Deming, manager of the Baodao Agricultural Transport and Marketing Collective in Taichung, bought eight licenses at once and gave them to eight farmers for contract production. Zhan says: “NT$50,000 in royalties is actually small change. I see it as an investment that will absolutely earn me money.”

At the end of June, Baodao Ganlu pears are ready for harvest in the orchard of pear farmer Zheng Fengyuan in Taichung’s Houli District.

Liu Shenquan uses grafting techniques in his efforts to breed Taiwanese varieties of Asian pear.

Targeting Middle Eastern markets

Asian pears are all juicy by nature (they are known as the “granddaddy of fruits”) and water accounts for 80% of the weight of a Baodao Ganlu pear. Liu and Lin believe that this fruit can be exported to the Middle East, where “juicy fruit is always popular.” The flesh of these pears does not readily turn brown when cut, so there could be opportunities to supply them for airplane meals or to upscale hotels.

The New-Zealand-based kiwifruit brand Zespri sells its products around the globe. It was formed as an ­agricultural cooperative by kiwifruit producers and ha­s adopted a production strategy with international licensing to coordinate harvest seasons and supply fruit to the world year-round. Variety rights for Baodao Ganlu have already been registered in China and applied for in Japan, and Liu and Lin hope to imitate the Zespri model and market Taiwan-bred Asian pears across the globe.

During the harvest season for Baodao Ganlu pears, a farmer drives a transporter filled with freshly picked fruit to a packaging center.

In the packaging area, a worker grades pears by size.

A new star: ‘Tainung No. 1’ strawberries

Another example of plant breeding in the spirit of “ten years honing a single sword” is the case of an elegant bright red strawberry. Strawberries are one of the most popular fruits in Taiwan for self-pick tourism trips in winter.

In 2021 the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) of the MOA unveiled their new ‘Tainung No. 1’ strawberry, which was bred using the Xiang-Shui cultivar as the maternal plant and the fragrant Fengxiang strawberry (‘Taoyuan No. 1’) as the paternal plant (pollen provider); it has been awarded plant variety rights. Its breeder, Shiau Yih-juh, an associate researcher in the Division of Plant Germplasm at TARI, says that this variety is richly fragrant, has a tender yet somewhat firm bite, and stores and transports well. Plant nurseries have already been licensed to propagate and sell seedlings for farmers to cultivate. However, TARI cautions that people who buy the seedlings may not propagate them to sell nor give them away to any third party, as this would constitute infringement of intellectual property rights.

The Agriculture and Food Agency of the MOA notes that plant variety rights are a type of intellectual property that is vital to agriculture. Not only do they protect the rights and interests of breeders, they also encourage citizens to innovate by developing new varieties and thereby drive advances in agriculture. Taiwan first promulgated the Plant Seed Act (now named the Plant Variety and Plant Seed Act) in 1988 to enforce protection of plant variety rights. To date variety rights have been registered for 1,550 cultivars of 219 plant species.

Taiwan has a number of agricultural products that are internationally famous and of which Taiwanese are especially proud, including orchids, pineapples, mangoes, and tea, and breeding technology and techniques have been critical to their success. Breeders like Liu Shenquan and Shiau Yih-juh crystallize a combination of knowledge and hard work to enrich Taiwan’s agricultural sector and demonstrate Taiwan’s soft power. Meanwhile, by respecting plant variety rights, producers and consumers can play their own part in developing sustainable agriculture.

Tainung No. 1 strawberries are bright red in color, have an excellent texture when eaten fresh, and are also a top choice for making high-quality jams, preserves, and pastries.
(courtesy of Shiau Yih-juh, TARI)

Shiau Yih-juh, a researcher at the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, developed the new strawberry variety ‘Tainung No. 1’ to suit the challenges of today’s growing environment.
(courtesy of Shiau Yih-juh, TARI)