Decisive Role of Fragmentation Functions in Hard Hadron Production

It is demonstrated that the fragmentation functions at large momentum fraction play a key role in hard hadron production from relativistic proton-proton collisions. We find that this region of the fragmentation functions is not strongly constrained by the electron-positron data. This freedom can be used (together with the transverse momentum distribution of partons) to reproduce hard pion-to-proton ratio data in relativistic proton-proton collisions.