By Clint Thompson
The pecan crop in the Southeast is light this harvest season, amid the prolonged dry spell impacting the region. It is not a surprising development, according to Lenny Wells, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension pecan specialist.
He noted in the UGA Pecan Extension Blog the problem was evident with the Pawnee variety, the first variety harvested this season. Though trees appeared to have a strong crop load during the production season, the “wagons are weighing light with a fair amount of stick-tights and pops blowing out at the cleaning plants.”
The lack of rain since August led to the “lighter” crop this harvest season.
“I’ve been expecting with the dry weather that we’ve had since August, I’ve been expecting some issues with that. Any time that we turn off bone dry in August and September when there’s a crop on the trees, we always see issues with that, even when they’re irrigated,” Wells said. “The Pawnee (variety) should have escaped that problem. We saw some things out of Pawnee that were a little different, and I think a lot of that had to do with extended cloudy weather that we had all summer; getting all of the rain that we got.
“That’s what made the Pawnee crop a lot lighter than what it appeared to be.”
Minimal Rainfall
Rainfall has been minimal in recent months, especially in Southwest Georgia. According to the UGA Weather Network, Albany, Georgia, has received just 1.32 inches of rainfall since Sept. 1, while Tifton, Georgia, has received 1.18 inches.
Unfortunately, it appears that other pecan varieties are experiencing similar symptoms.
“As we’re getting into some of the normal varieties, mid-season varieties like Desirable and things like that, we’re seeing those being light. In that case, some of it is from scab … but some of it has also been just the dry weather that we had at kernel filling,” Wells said.