I have some limited experience with this, but I think it's a very good idea given the need to have access to the fruit to monitor for ripeness and for harvesting. Also I believe Peterson had concluded in some research that pruning would increase yield. My experience though has been for the purpose of topworking, so I've really butchered some trees (which seems to be necessary for the grafts to take)and they for the most part have responded well. I would say the height would be determined by how high you would be willing to go to monitor for fruit ripeness and harvesting.

Mine were topped to about 5' when young...now they are wide and manageable and about 10'. I do have to thin them out but otherwise I would say, yes...prune them down.

Thanks Creekweb and sandy_village for your response.

How wide are your trees?

Does anyone have a photo of how a "top-pruned" pawpaw tree looks like. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks.

I too would love to see a pic of how they turn out topped since i have been considering the same practice to our home paw paw orchard. Cliff england recommended to me to top off persimmons at around 10' to allow them to grow horizontally and still be reachable.

I am curious if Cliff England was referring to both Asian and American persimmons or just one type? I have found most Asian varieties do not grow much taller than 10-12 foot or at least the varieties I have tried with the exception of saijo which naturally tends to grow tall. It certainly will grow taller.

I think there may be a few photos of pruned pawpaws on the KSU website.

I only have American and American/Asian hybrids planted so I assume his recommendations were specific to those. He did mention that you could do the same thing to pawpaw is to keep everything within easy reach. I really still would like to see a picture of someone who has trees that are pruned in this manner. Edited: I'll check out ksus website thanks