Most people eat a few pecans year round, but pecan consumption peaks at the holidays. At this time of year, you can usually get new harvest pecans from the fall harvest. This year, though, pecan production is well down, and there are not enough current year pecans to meet demand. Not to worry, though. Pecan farmers still have plenty of nuts stored from last year, and they are perfectly good. Properly stored, pecans will keep for years.
Why the meager crop this year? Part of the reason is the dry spring in many pecan producing areas in Texas. But the major reason is tree biology.
Pecans, like many nut-bearing trees, are mast-fruiting species. These trees bear heavy crops in alternate years, or at greater intervals. Mast fruiting is probably a result of two factors.
The first is resource availability. A tree that bears a very heavy crop in one year may not have the resources to bear heavily the following year. Heavy mast years tend to occur over wide ranges of a species’ range. Since 2007 was an exceptionally good year for pecans, it is no surprise that production was down this year.
The second reason that trees don’t bear heavy crops every year has to do with seed predation. If trees bear heavy crops every year, predators such as squirrels, weevils and birds will have a reliable source of food to support large populations. By bearing heavy crops at irregular, unpredictable intervals, trees can avoid building up large populations of predators.
More on mast fruiting in a future post.
Species in this post:
pecan, Carya illinoinensis, Juglandaceae. Sometimes described as C. illinoensis, but this is an invalid name.
Meager pecan crop saved by last year’s nuts | Business news | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
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Great post! I am delighted to learn something new where I had not expected.
What it is to humans as science, is to the pecan tree just common sense.