Pecan Husbandry: Challenges and Opportunities: First National Pecan Workshop Proceedings

Excerpts from the Preface: The pecan is a uniquely American crop that has been transformed from a wild component of the riverbottom ecosystem to the economically most significant native cultivated North American horticultural crop. Its economic success is largely due to the research accomplishments of the many dozens of pecan scientists that have studied pecan and its interaction with environmental factors. Advances in the development of propagation methods, cultivation techniques, pest management strategies, nutrition, irrigation technology, harvesting, postharvest handling, and genetically improved cultivars have served to propel and expand the industry. These advances have had the positive benefit of greatly increasing the national production of quality nuts, however they have had the side-effect of greatly increasing production costs. During the last decade or two, the impact of inflationary forces on the costs of orchard inputs, and a concurrent failure by the industry to increase demand and to adequately regulate nut quality, has resulted in pecan producers experiencing a severe ‘cost-price’ squeeze that currently threatens the economic integrity of many growers. The workshop objectives were to a) clarify the primary factors contributing to the cost-price squeeze, b) educate scientists as to the nature of the problem and how it interacts with other problems and disciplines, c) encourage cooperative efforts to address these problems, d) to gain insight into new areas of research, e) to provide new ideas and concepts, and f) to encourage greater communication among researchers.