Scrape the bark to see if it is green underneath. Cut off the dead areas. Do you think it might have had fire blight this past summer? Did the trees grow well?

It's hard to tell if your tree is in critical condition or not but some areas don't look good.

Do you know which variety(ies) are sick? Are all 4 sick? I personally do not know if this is fireblight damage, but a number of Asian pears can not resist it. The novelty of growing a 4/1 pear is appealing, but disease ruins the effort and investment. One of my 10 year old pears had similar damage on several branches that were 3/4" thick and thinner.It also had fireblight on young twigs and clusters of new leaves. I clipped them off and grafted Asian pear scions from Tennosui using bark grafts. The new scions grew well and do not have the sickness. One of the expected benefits of having 4 Asian varieties' grafted onto one trunk is the cross-pollination that many Asian pears need/benefit from. The Tennosui is self-fruitful and thus does not need pollen from relatives. If you wanted any of these scions to graft onto your tree, I would mail some to you.Almost every fruit grower has plant-purchase regret. Welcome to the challenge of growing fruit. It can be done, and is being done.

That looks like fireblight to me. After you cut some of the dead wood break it and smell it if it stinks then you got fireblight.

That looks exactly like my asian pear last winter. It was newly planted in 2009, did great, we had a long period of record cold and snow in Oct. before things hardened off, but the pear looked fine into December, then went to around -27 in mid December. A few weeks later, I noticed the same thing you are showing in your picture.

Anyway, the problem did not show up until after the below zero weather, so I doubted it was fireblight. I clipped some of the top branches that were above the discolored area but weren't discolored and grafted them to a regular pear tree this spring. They never grew. Neither did anything above the lowest blackened areas.

This spring, the tree put out a couple new shoots from about ground level, and they grew vigorously all summer (acknowledging that the deer and grasshoppers pruned them regularly). I bury my grafts when planting to help protect the scion in the event of a bad winter so that I will still have a chance for the tree rather than just having a rootstock survive. This winter I mulched the tree heavily to try to provide better protection to see if a couple years growth will give it better survivability. We'll see how it does--twice now into the low - teens and -27 Tuesday night.

So, sorry to say but I expect the tree has suffered cold damage and you will be left with some vigorously growing shoots in the spring from near grown level. If these come above the graft, you will have one of the varieties you planted, whichever one was used as the base of the tree.

They didn't label the grafts so I don't know which one is which. All but one has some sort of black on it.

I planted it last spring, it didn't ever look super healthy, but I chalked that up to it being new. I have never grown a tree from bare root before last spring, so I don't really know what to expect.

I scraped a little off in the black part and it is green underneath.

So you think it is fire blight? No cure, just cut off affected areas? That wouldn't leave me with much of a tree left. Would it be better to just get a new tree at this point or is it better to try to work with this one?

Thank you all for the help!

If it is fireblight make sure you cut off the affected branches as soon as possible much farther down the affected area. make sure you dip your pruners in alcohol every time you make a cut and lastly discard your clippings in a plastic bag in with your garbage pick-up. Asian pears should not be fertalise heavy with nitrogen.Fast new growth with asian pears is an open invetation to fireblight.

If it is green underneath then the wood is still alive and you should have no problems.

fireblight kills the wood and it would not be green if you had fireblight. I still don't know why your wood is black though. could be cold related. But If it s green underneath then you have living wood. and your tree is fine.

I've had similar looking damage after extreme cold temps. Have you had any extreme cold temps this winter?

It has been cold, but not unusually cold. 10 degrees is probably the coldest it has been.

Fire blight kills the wood, doesn't just make it dark?

Are there any other reasons the branches would turn black like that?

hello!
Can anyone share with me what's best fertilizer for Asian pear? I just bought a Shonui, nursery people told us we do not need two tree for pollination, is that true?
Any advises would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Had the same issue noted this spring ( winter freeze)....although I did have leaves coming out of the black branches, they began to die back in June. I pruned the tree dang near down to the base as the black on one tree traveled from the top to about 8 inches....there are no shoots left...can only hope it grows new shoots. The other asian pear I trimmed down about 17 inches to a couple shoots losing the black. There was no green under the black....so although it produced leaves, it slowly died back....no new shoots growing just had a few leaves and that was it. Hoping this spurns new vigorous growth...otherwise I have to start over. These trees were planted bare root and lasted all of one winter. Fruit trees take sooo long to produce I hate when this happens....I'm not getting younger.

Fire blight is very common disease on pears and apples You shuold look into more resistant varieties. Read up on fire blight from any university extension services. Disinfect your pruners so you do not spread the disease.

If you like Euro pears, the Harrow series are worth a trial. They fruit in 2-3 years. A. Pear really depends on where you are. A blight resistant in one area, may not in another.

I edited my comment...my issue was from winter freeze.