Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Minimal scab in 2014

Scab lesions on Dooley pecans
    Up until late August, the 2014 growing season in SE Kansas can best be described as having below average rainfall. Back in June, we were receiving regular rain showers prompting us to apply a fungicide along with our pecan nut casebearer spray. Once July hit, we started missing significant rain showers and our grove started to dry out. With this year's dry mid-summer, pecan scab never became a serious threat to our pecan crop.
   This morning I visited trees of two cultivars that are normally very susceptible to pecan scab; Dooley and Peruque. I was interested to see how these two cultivars have faired with the minimal scab spray program they received this year.

Scab lesions on Peruque pecans
    Scab lesions can be seen on the shucks of both cultivars. However, in both cases, the scab lesions were small and largely superficial. Just last year, we didn't even harvest our Dooley crop because scab had destroyed every single nut. In 2013, Peruque wasn't much better as we were forced to discard numerous scab infected stick-tights off the cleaning table. What a difference a year makes!