USDA Sets the Table for Next Levels of Pecan Research

Posted by Growing Produce Staff|March 27, 2024

The Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) recently completed a $2.5 million laboratory modernization to accelerate pecan breeding through innovations in genetics and plant disease research.

Pecan trees represent North America’s native nut tree and a multimillion-dollar crop. These trees have been cultivated commercially for less than 150 years. It takes an average of 28 years from planting a new seedling to releasing a new pecan cultivar with traditional methods of pecan breeding. This is due to the long waiting period for pecan trees to start producing nuts, which takes up more than half of the time. With the new modernized laboratory, the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program will now be able to incorporate genetic techniques into pecan breeding to accurately predict mature nut traits on young seedlings, saving up to a decade in the breeding process.

Breeding new pecan cultivars is a lengthy process with long waiting periods of 7 to 10 years before a pecan tree can produce nuts and long testing phases to evaluate potential cultivars. It is challenging to support pecan breeding efforts due to their high resource demands and extended timelines, which make it impractical for private or commercial entities and challenging for academic programs.

To show off the new lab, an event was hosted by USDA’s ARS and the Texas Pecan Grower’s Association. ARS leaders, State Representatives, scientists, and members of the pecan industry organizations toured the new laboratory with now dedicated research spaces for plant genetics, microscopy, tissue culture, controlled-environment growth chambers, and plant disease research.

In addition, researchers will now be able to do controlled evaluations of promising breeding lines with different regional strains of pecan scab. Pecan scab, caused by the fungal pathogen Venturia effusa, is the most economically significant disease in the pecan industry and has high diversity across the geographic range of cultivated pecans. For the first time, the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program will now be able to screen pecan scab cultures from all areas of the country in controlled environments to identify new sources of disease resistance and incorporate those unique samples into the breeding program. Researchers will also be able to do controlled evaluations for other significant and emerging pathogens of pecan, including the heavily quarantined international pathogen, Xylella fastidiosa.