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The Apple and Pear Research Council was a quango and non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom from 1989 to 2003. It was often used as an example of the ineffectiveness and pointlessness of quangos.

Creation and functions
The APRC was created in 1989 under the Apple and Pear Research Council Order 1989, acting as a successor to the defunct Apple and Pear Development Council. Its mission was to increase the industry's efficiency and productivity, improve and develop the industry's service to the community and to enable this to be done more economically. This was done through undertaking or supporting studies into better production, manangement and labour methods, scientific research, the collection and formulation of industry statistics, and publicity for the industry in the UK. For example, the APRC provided funding to several papers researching the epidemiology of Nectria galligena, a pathogen that apple trees are susceptible to.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was given the power to appoint members to the council: five members to represent growers' interests, one member to represent employee interests, one member who was a marketing and distribution expert, and two independent members who had no financial interests in the industry.

The APRC was responsible for creating and managing a register of all apple and pear growers in England and Wales; growers had a month to apply to the council to be registered. With the consent of the agriculture minister, it also had powers to be able to charge growers to meet its administration costs and to require growers to give information on their activities in the industry that the council might need for its work.

Criticism and closure
In 1993, David McKie reported that the APRC had a staff of just one person in an article questioning the efficiency and representativeness of quangos. In 1997, after the Nolan inquiry recommended that quango heads should serve no more than two terms, the head of the APRC faced pressure to resign.

The APRC, alongside the British Potato Council and the Commission on New Towns, was one of the quangos which Tim Ambler recommended be abolished in his working paper on cutting government costs and inefficiency. The evaluation recommended that the APRC be folded into the Horticultural Development Council. Despite concerns about potential increases in administrative costs, the HDC was itself merged into the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board in 2008.