Of the 14 member countries, representatives from just two were absent from the discussions on January 21 in Berlin. Members endorsed the idea of linking taste and eating quality guidelines - being developed by WAPA and New Zealand's HortResearch - to nutritional and health benefits and using them as a base for a world quality mark.

WAPA work to facilitate the flow of information between supplier countries also bore fruit at the meeting when southern hemisphere country representatives were able to share their crop forecasts for the upcoming season. Apple production per country was forecast as follows: Argentina: 1.225 million tonnse, Australia: 330,000t, Brazil: 746,000t, Chile: 1.075mt, New Zealand: 475,000t, South Africa: 245,000t. This marks a slight decrease on last year's total.

For pears, total output is forecast to amount to 1.016mt in line with last year's volumes. Production forecasts per country are: Argentina: 560,000t, Chile: 320,000t, South Africa: 120,000t, New Zealand: 16,000t.

Representatives of the US pear industry were absent from the meeting but later told the Journal of their support for its work. 'WAPA is developing into an important informational tool involving nearly all of the major pome-fruit producing countries world-wide,' said Kevin Moffitt president and ceo of the Pear Bureau Northwest. 'In the future, I see co-operative marketing efforts aimed at a world-wide increase in produce consumption. It is very difficult for competitors to pull together but really our competition comes from snack food and fast food. Working together we can gain some real benefit by increasing consumption for our products, but not at the expense of each other.' New Zealander John McCliskie is president of WAPA assisted by vice-president Jacques Vanoye of France. WAPA membership includes: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the US.

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