PEAR RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT IN THE HUMID SUBTROPICS OF RUSSIA: FROM SOCHI EXPERIMENTAL STATION TO THE SUBTROPICAL SCIENTIFIC CENTRE OF RAS

The paper examines the stages of pear research development in the humid subtropics of Russia over the past 130 years. Sochi Experimental Station, opened in the spring of 1894 on the initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture, had the task to study the most important plant crops for local conditions and disseminate them among the local population by familiarizing them with cultivation techniques. By 1934, plantings under subtropical, citrus and southern fruit crops acquired the character of industrial orchards; however, the sufficient material and technical base of the station, highly qualified personnel and significant scientific accumulations in all research fields formed a solid foundation for solving complex and important problems of scientific support for subtropical and southern horticulture development. Subsequently, the official name of the institute and its departmental affiliation changed several times, but the main tasks and research fields remained, having a significant impact on the development and enrichment of cultural diversity. The development of scientific trends in the fruit seed crop - pear - is shown in detail. The features of studying the source material and their breeding value, the optimal directions for the selection and identification of valuable genotypes using system analysis methods were determined. Automated system-cognitive analysis was successfully applied to solve a wide range of problems of identification, forecasting, classification, diagnostics, decision support and research of the modeled subject area by studying its model. 11 sources of economically valuable traits (compactness, high marketability and taste, productivity, disease resistance) for use in selection were identified. To expand the pear assortment, new adaptive cultivars were selected to be resistant to biotic and abiotic factors, with homeostasis in terms of basic economic and biological properties. Based on the selection achievements, 24 new promising cultivars with high ecological flexibility, disease resistance, productivity and other valuable traits were obtained and submitted for the State Cultivar Testing. In 1996, the Black Sea pear cultivars ‘Yantarnaya’, ‘Rassvet’ and ‘Verbena’ were included in the zoned assortment of the North Caucasus region (1996).