Archive for the 'Agriculture' Category
Monday, February 19th, 2007
World’s Hottest Chile
An NMSU professor has identified what is evidently the hottest chile in the world:
In fall of 2006, the Guinness Book of Records confirmed that New Mexico State University Regent’s Professor Paul Bosland had indeed discovered the world’s hottest chile pepper, Bhut Jolokia.
Bhut Jolokia, at 1,001,304 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), is nearly twice as hot as Red Savina, the chile pepper variety it replaces as the world’s hottest. A New Mexico green chile contains about 1,500 SHUs and an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000 SHUs.
“The name Bhut Jolokia translates as ‘ghost chile,’” Bosland said, “we’re not sure why they call it that, but I think it’s because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!”
According to Bosland, Bhut Jolokia is a naturally occurring inter-specific hybrid indigenous to the Assam region of northeastern India. A member of NMSU’s Chile Pepper Institute visiting India sent Bhut Jolokia seeds back to NMSU for testing in 2001.
“The plant doesn’t set fruit very well, so it took a couple of years to get enough for field testing,” Bosland said.
The Scoville Heat Units scale for measuring pepper hotness is named in honor of Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, who invented the first method of measuring hotness. The hot substance in chiles is capsaicin. Pure capsaicin has a Scoville Heat rating of 15 to 16 million.
The Chile Pepper Institute was established in 1992 and is located at New Mexico State University.
Tags: Hottest Chile, NMSU, Chile Pepper Institute, Capsaicin
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
Pecan Pruning
After the harvest, pecan growers have one last, big task — pruning the trees.
Pecan trees are pruned for several reasons. The main reason is to keep the trees smaller, which makes harvesting and tree care easier. But pruning also helps increase or maintain yields and improve nut quality.
Big trees are pruned using a rideable, motorized arm:
The operator can drive through the orchard and raise or lower the arm as needed.
Pruning requires skill. Trees must be cut in the right way, dead limbs recognized and taken out, and narrow crotches removed.
The prunings must be cleared so that they don’t interfere with the care of the trees or serve as a host for disease or insects.
The prunings are first stacked, then hauled off and burnt. No viable economic use for pecan prunings has been found, so burning is currently considered the best disposal option.
Until they began to leaf out and grow, pruned trees look buzz-cut.
Tags: Pecan Pruning, Motorized Arm, Rideable Pruning Arm
Monday, December 18th, 2006
No Trespassing
As you drive the backroads around Mesilla, through the 18,000+ acres of pecans in the county, you will see these little signs every where:
Why such concern about trees? They are not going to be damaged by people walking under them.
Here’s the reason:
Tags: Pecan Thieves
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Pecan Harvesting
The 2006 pecan harvest is almost finished.
The trees are ready for harvest when most of the protective shucks have split. You can see the open shucks and pecans here:
Pecan trees alternate between high yield and low yield years. This year is a low year for this area. Production in a low year can be as little as 1/3 of a high year.
Here is a tree from an orchard with an excellent yield this year, perhaps because the trees are younger and were recently transplanted.
The first step in harvesting is getting the nuts out of the tree. This is done with a shaker:
The trees are shook for about 2 or 3 seconds and you can feel the shaking in the ground 20 or 30 feet away. The going rate to get your trees shook if you don’t own a shaker is $5 a tree.
Sometimes it is necessary to shake several branches of a large tree.
Here you can see pecans falling as the tree shakes.
The shaker shakes out anything that will fall, including shucks, leaves, and twigs. All of this joins the leaves which have already fallen from the tree, so the second step is to use a windrow machine to rake this material into rows.
The last step in harvesting is to use a sweeper to pick up the leaves and debris and pecans and separate the pecans. Here’s a sweeper in action.
The sweeper stores the nuts in a bin and grinds the leaves and debris and returns it to the soil.
Here are what trees look like after harvest.
Doña Ana county produces more pecans than any similarly-sized area in the world.
Tags: Pecan Harvest, Pecan Shaker, Pecan Sweeper
Saturday, November 11th, 2006
Pecans Yellowing
The pecans trees are just beginning to yellow. This is later than usual, which will delay the harvest, which usually begins in late October.
The pecans are hard to see unless you look closely.
Tags: Pecan Harvest
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
Cabbage Harvest
The harvest begins.
Tags: Cabbage Harvest
