Temprate Fruits (1+1)

CULTURAL PRACTICES

Aftercare:

• Pecan has very long growing season and requires proper management throughout to ensure good plant growth and productivity.
• Mulching the basins with dry grass helps in conserving the soil moisture, control of weeds and adds organic matter on decomposition.
• Rats poses big problems to pecan plantations and require protection by baiting against rats and keeping basins free from weeds and cultivation regularly.
• Pre emergence and contact herbicides are generally used to control the weeds. Diuron and simazine (2.5 kg/ha) are widely used herbicides besides, paraquat @ 1 kg/ha can also be used as contact herbicide.
• Cover crops can also be grown during summer and winter especially on hilly slopes to check soil erosion and leaching of nutrients. Crops like soyabean, beans, cowpea and clover can also be grown in summer in young orchard before they come into bearing.
• Since pecan is planted at greater spacing and come into bearing late, it is advisable to grow intercrops till it starts bearing. Besides the seasonal crops filler trees such as peach can also be grown as an intercrop in the orchard.

Pollination:

• Pecan is a monoecious tree. The staminate and distillate flowers are borne separately on the same tree and organized into catkin and spikes respectively.
• The pecan has compound buds enclosing floral and mixed buds in separate bud scale but with a common outer scale. The floral bud develop to produce catkin but mixed bud grow either into a vegetative shoot or in a single pistillate inflorescence.
• There is complete or less complete dichogamy in pecan which often poses main difficulty in pollination especially in isolated plantings.
• The most pecan cultivars requires cross pollination for good fruit set.
• Wind is pollinating agent which carry pollens for about 900 meters.
• For good fruit set in pecan, planting should have 3-4 cultivars well dispersed in the orchard or at least 10 per cent pollinizer cultivar should be planted in the orchard.

Manures and Fertilizers:

• Pecan responds to fertilizer applications very slowly and effects on growth and yield are observed after two to three years. Thus the leaf analysis may not hold good in determining the nutritional status of the plant.
• Pecan tree should be manured with 100 kg of farmyard every year in the month of December. In addition, apply 500 g N:P:K mixture (15:15:15) per year age of the tree up to 16 years.
• The full bearing trees of 16 years and above should be given 8 kg of NPK fertilizer mixture every year.
• Pecan trees are prone to zinc deficiency which can be corrected with foliar application of zinc sulphate @ 0.5 per cent.

Irrigation:

• Adequate moisture is required to improve growth and productivity of pecan.
• Irrigation improves kernel yield, nut weight and diameter, appearance and oil content.
• Pecan needs proper soil moisture all the year and requires irrigation even before shuck opening and it reduces the stick tight and viviparous nuts.
• The pecan trees are commonly irrigated through flood, basin, and drip irrigation methods at 6-7 days intervals during critical periods i.e flowering, fruit set, fruit and nut growth of water requirements.

Maturity and Harvesting

• The nuts are harvested when the husk or hull covering the shell becomes fairly loose.
• A single shaking will bring down the bulk of the matured nuts which can be collected on a plastic sheet.

• To enhance splitting, the hulled nuts may are dipped in water to moisten the shell and spread out in the sun to dry.
• One method of salting the split nuts is to boil them in salt solution for few minutes, then re dry and store them.
• If stored in plastic bags, nuts will last for at least 4 to 6 weeks in the refrigerator.
• Frozen nuts will last for several months.