Friday, March 4, 2011

Pawnee suffers winter injury

   We cut into some Pawnee twigs yesterday and discovered that the cold snap we experienced back in February (-16 F) has caused some internal browning (photo above). The damage looks like it should not prevent normal bud break and shoot growth but it will be interesting to see if pistillate flower formation is affected by the freeze damage.
   Over the coming weeks we will be evaluating all of our pecan cultivars for cold injury. Then, later in the season, we'll see how the cold injury affect bud break and flowering.