KSU-OF1 to be named 'Oswego'

     We've been looking at a 'Greenriver' seedling,  KSU-OF1, for several years now. This year, during our harvest tour, everyone could see the major difference between the original 'Greenriver' cultivar and its progeny--The KSU-OF1 clone had twice the yield as its parent. Although 'Greenriver' is a scab resistant cultivar, the main drawback for grafting 'Greenriver' has always been that the trees are somewhat shy nut producers. In sharp contrast, producing great nut crops is one of the best attributes of  KSU-OF1 (photo at right).
     During harvest, I picked up nuts from both 'Greenriver' and KSU-OF1 and I had trouble telling them apart. Both shells and kernels looked identical. Oh, boy! Could these 2 trees be that same cultivar? I think not. We have 'Greenriver' and KSU-OF1 grafted in the same cultivar trial block on the same seedling rootstock and the yield difference between the 2 clones was consistent--every KSU-OF1 tree had far more nuts than the 'Greenriver' trees. The yields were so different you could see it by just looking at the trees. Although closely related,  KSU-OF1 is a definite improvement over 'Greenriver'.
     As I told the folks at the Harvest Tour, I've decided on a name for KSU-OF1. This new pecan cultivar will be called 'Oswego'. I chose this name to honor one of the little towns in SE Kansas that is known for pecan production. You might remember I started this tradition for naming new pecan cultivars  when I named 'Chetopa', originally tested under the name KS112,