Thursday, March 20, 2014

Evaluating nut samples from the breeding project

    Growers that attended the Kansas Nut Growers Association meeting last weekend had the opportunity to look at all the nut samples we collected from our pecan breeding plot (photo at right). We asked each each grower to pick out their top 5 and jot the tree number down on a file card.
   Out of 216 total samples, 46 different nuts were rated as "top five".  Some of the more popular selections are shown in the photographs below. It is interesting to note that some growers seem to be most interested in large nut size while others look for the brightest, plumpest nut meats. You can count me as a member of the bright, plumb kernel team--I like the looks of KT149 and KT329. However, we will need to look at all of our trees for several more years before we can make an educated guess as to which seedlings might make outstanding new cultivars worthy of advanced testing.