March 2019

March Advertisers

Letter from the Editor: “In March, Another Beginning Blooms”

Another season. Another month. And no matter how much we resist, time marches on. These things aren’t a surprise, but I always find that my deadline for writing this letter to you all sneaks up on me. And like with every other issue, this one arrived and passed in a blink. March is a busy...

Pecan Production and Market Trends in China

The U.S. pecan industry has experienced dramatic changes over the last five years. Some of these changes, like the development of the American Pecan Council, have been good, while others like the recent hurricanes that decimated many pecan orchards throughout the South have come at a terrible price. Unfortunately, change is a fact of life...

Training Young Pecan Trees is Difficult

To my knowledge and experience, every pecan grower has trouble training their young trees into a central leader tree. In 2017, at the Western Pecan Growers Conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico all five members of the pecan hedging panel said exactly the same thing about their young tree training: “We just let ‘em go.”...

Elevating the Pecan Nutrition Message in 2019 and Beyond

The 2018 launch of American Pecans, The Original Supernut brand to consumers was rooted in three core traits of pecans—taste, heritage, and nutrition. There’s a reason for this. Our research has shown that today’s consumers, particularly our target audience of Gen X and Y moms, care about providing their families wholesome, tasty meals using locally-sourced...

North Carolina Growers Gather to Celebrate 25 years as an Association

Celebrating 25 years, the North Carolina Pecan Grower’s Association gathered in Clinton, North Carolina on the dreary morning of Feb. 16 for its annual meeting, where attendees networked, heard from pecan specialists and spoke with exhibitors. Kicking off the meeting, Mike Parker, Ph.D., from the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University, discussed managing...

March Adverstisers

Meet the “Southern Region Integrated Management of Pecan Arthropod Pests” Group

For this month’s column, I would like to recognize a pecan working group that many of you may not be aware of and highlight a few of its accomplishments: the “Southern Region Integrated Management of Pecan Arthropod Pests” group. The project group was initiated in 1972 when researchers from land-grant universities across the United States...

Family Trees: Looking back, Going forward

Every grafted pecan tree is full of stories that can be confusing to someone not involved in the pecan industry. I want to tell the origin stories of three cultivars: ‘Western’ (the most important scion cultivar for the western region), ‘Riverside’ (an important rootstock cultivar for the West), and ‘Longfellow’ (which has recently been confirmed...

To Mulch or Not to Mulch: What is best for my pecan tree?

SPRING! It is quickly approaching, but what is it. It is one of the four conventional seasons, coming after Winter, but preceding Summer. Astronomically speaking, it starts on the Vernal Equinox and ends at the Summer Solstice. If you ask folks what they associate with this season, they’ll say Spring is a time of renewal,...

Pecan Aphids, Part I: Distribution on Pecan Leaves

This article is the first of a three-part series examining the pecan-feeding aphids, especially the black pecan aphid. This first part concerns the general biology of the pecan aphids and their distribution on pecan leaves. In the second part, the emphasis will shift to the black pecan aphid with a discussion of feeding biology, and...

U.S. Pecan Growers Council Provides Update on China, Alternative Markets and Funding

The full impact of China’s increase in tariffs on pecans imported from the United States is becoming clearer. For 2017, pecan exports—shelled and inshell—to China reached 29,411 metric tons according to official U.S. Government export statistics. This was an increase of 19 percent over 2016 totals. By comparison, as of October of 2018, the last...