Earlier this week I collected some nut samples from 3 pecan cultivars. The first tree I visited was a Henning, one of the earliest ripening pecan cultivars we have in our collection. I then cut nut clusters from a mid-season ripening Kanza tree and a late-ripening Maramec tree. At this point in the growing season, you can see that Hennnig nuts have already started to plump-up and have entered the phase of rapid fruit expansion (photo above). Kanza and Maramec still looked to still be in the post-fertilization phase; just waiting around to start fruit expansion.
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| Cross sections of a Henning, Kanza, and Maramec nuts (left to right) |
Cutting into the nuts confirmed my suspicions about the stage of nut development for each of these cultivars (photo at left). The cotyledon of the Henning nut has expanded into a large heart shape; the
first indicator that the nut has started into rapid fruit expansion. In contrast, the Kanza and Maramec nuts had small oval-shaped cotyledons. Rapid fruit growth for these two later-ripening cultivars has not yet begun.
