Every fall, I look forward to recording the date of shuck-split for each of the pecan cultivars and breeding selections growing on my farm. Three times per week, I stop by every tree and take a close look at nut production, nut size and fill, and judge the progress of shuck-split. Once the tree achieves shuck-split, I collect a nut sample to be evaluated after I've completed my commercial harvest.
On any one tree, the process of shuck opening does not happen all at one time. Today, while examining trees in my breeding, I came to tree KT214. The photo at right show a cluster of KT214 has split shuck.
However, as I looked over the entire tree I found that most KT214 nuts had not yet split (photo at left). Whenever I record the date of shuck-split, I am actually judging the date when at least 50% of the nuts on a tree have split shucks. In the case of the KT214 tree, only a hand full of clusters had split shucks, so I will not record today as the date of shuck-split. That important date will probably be this Friday or next Monday.
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| KT674 16 Sept. 2019 | |
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| KT415 18 Sept. 2019 |
Shuck-split is just starting in my breeding plot. Since most seedlings in the trial are the results of crosses between a northern cultivar and Pawnee, the ripening dates for these trees tend to be early with the majority splitting shuck during the last week of September or the first week of October. However, since my last post, two additional trees in the breeding plot have split shuck: KT674 and KT415 (photos above).
