Part 14

Mr. Chase: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a few remarks on this business of commercial cracking and large pieces that I hear mentioned by my good friend, Mr. Weber. I had hoped to have the two largest shellers in the country present at these meetings, but was unable to get them here. In this area the commercial walnut cracking industry is related directly to the type of machinery necessary to recover the kernels. For example, the two or three cracking plants in Nashville handle an estimated ten million pounds of nuts each year and turn out roughly 1.2 million pounds of kernels. These kernels go directly to confectionary syrup and ice cream plants. Therefore, they are not interested in size of pieces. In fact, if they are too large, the commercial users have to chop them up. So what we are doing here, ladies and gentlemen, is confusing what we want to do in the way of judging nuts, it appears to me. There is little reason to assume that the Thomas, if they could get 10 million pounds of Thomas, would be more valuable to the commercial crackers. But that doesn't necessarily interfere with our judging system that we are trying to design to tell which nut is the best to grow.

I specifically asked these buyers of millions of pounds of nuts: "If I came in with some Thomas nuts would I get some more money for them?" Their reply was, "No, sir. We pay a flat rate per hundred pounds of nuts. We know that some of them are going to be excellent; we know some of them are going to be poor, but we intend to get from 12 to 15 per cent kernel recovery out of them."

In 1940 we brought quantities of improved varieties to the cracking plant in Knoxville and ran them through Mr. Smalley's machine. He was amazed. He didn't believe it; didn't believe his eyes. They came out in large pieces. But under present conditions they'd be chopped up. None of these kernels moving out of Nashville vicinity go to retail trade, except a few that go to confectionary stores in 25-pound boxes and are sold a pound at a time for cooking purposes, not for eating out of the hand.

People like Mr. Korn and Mr. Hirschi, who are interested in selling kernels at a much higher price than the commercial crackers, have to have large pieces, attractive kernels, properly cared for, properly colored, and of mild flavor. Is it this group we are trying to assist by this judging system or the commercial cracker?

The number of acres planted with Thomas sufficient to yield enough nuts to operate one of these machines would be tremendous. There are several examples of where the machine has been purchased to be used on Thomas but hasn't been used. It has been stored away. They prefer to crack the Thomas nuts by hand.

So my point is this: It appears to me that we are interested in the grower of several trees around the farmstead. At least, in this section we are. Everyone here gathers and cracks walnuts. Our idea of acquainting them with the Thomas variety is to make their job easier in cracking and picking them out. It seems to me that's also the problem that we have as a group elsewhere, and I believe that in order for us to make headway on this judging schedule, which I think is necessary and desirable, we must view it from the home viewpoint at this time. That does not shut out the commercial viewpoint for later years. But now we are primarily interested in the home raising of nuts, unless I am in the wrong group. Thank you.

Mr. Weber: Mr. Chairman, I agree heartily with what Mr. Chase has to say, or otherwise we might as well quit now and raise seedling nuts to the best of our ability and sell them to the commercial crackers and let it go at that. But, if we do that, what's the use of searching out better varieties?

Dr. Cross: Mr. Chairman: I believe that if a nut acceptable to the home consumer, one which extracts easily and is attractive and palatable and is productive--if that type of nut is scored and comes to the attention of a sufficient number of growers, then I think the commercial people _will_ utilize it. So I don't believe there is anything to this argument. I believe if you go ahead on the basis of the home consumer and develop a nut that will be desirable for his purpose, and if in addition to these factors that have been discussed it is adaptable and productive, then it is going to be eventually the nut that the commercial man will utilize, because, after all, what we are growing nuts for is the kernel.

Mr. Weber: To bring it to a head, I move that we adopt that part of the report that favors the home consumer as against the commercial consumer, or we will be here all night talking about it.

Dr. Rohrbacher: I second the motion.

Dr. MacDaniels: You have heard the motion, which was seconded. Any remarks?

(Vote taken on the motion, carried unanimously.)

Dr. MacDaniels: That will be the basis on which the committee will work.

There are several other points to be considered. I would suggest the committee be asked to make further tests with the schedule as proposed in order to get additional data to determine if it is a usable schedule and can be used by different people with reasonably similar results, and if it does differentiate the things that we want to have a schedule differentiate in a test.

This last year we had hoped to do this, but there weren't enough samples of nuts available to be worth testing. I spent about $10 personally buying nuts from this source and that, and there wasn't a good sample in the lot, except one, which Sterling Smith gave me.

I think that if we have another season to work the schedule that has been proposed, we at least can demonstrate whether or not it is differentiating between varieties in a manner which is satisfactory.

I believe a motion is in order to bring this matter to a decision and end this discussion. Have you any further comment, Mr. Chase?

Mr. Chase: If it is not out of order, I move that we adopt for further trial, the scoring schedule proposed in the paper by Dr. Atwood and Dr. MacDaniels in the 1947 Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association.

President Davidson: I second the motion.

Mr. Stoke: May I make one remark? Does not that schedule ignore the factors of color and taste?

Dr. MacDaniels: It does, as not being objective characters.

Mr. Stoke: In other words, this motion approves something from the commercial slant rather than from the personal use slant.

Dr. MacDaniels: I wouldn't say that; it simply limits the judging schedule to those characteristics which can be objectively handled and are not a matter of opinion or judgment. That's the point here, I think.

Mr. Chase: Mr. Stoke and I don't quite agree--I don't think we are the only two--on flavor and color. However, in our exchange of correspondence we fully appreciate the advantage of light-colored, mild-flavored kernels. But I don't see any method by which we can place a numerical value on the color and flavor. Can we not describe the color and flavor along with the rating that describes the kernel and still have you on our side?

Mr. Stoke: Personally, I think we are splitting hairs. When we can't agree as to which color class a sample belongs, it must be somewhere near the border-line. Ordinarily the average human being will agree pretty well as to a blonde or a brunette or one that's neutral. And I think in the judging of walnuts, there can be no exact value based on the color. If you consider color and make a scientific test, your test wouldn't be the same as my test. But if it is a dark kernel, you can recognize it, and so can I, if we have any common sense.

Also in the matter of flavor, you and I can tell what we like and what we don't like. And I think there are those two limitations. We can't do this scientifically, because the human factor is here. But after all, it's humans that eat them and produce them for eating! And I rather, in the schedules last year, brought up objections to it. I didn't say I objected, and, of course, I don't now.

Mr. Chase: I'd like to just say this, and I am going to call on my good friend, J. C. McDaniel here, for agreement. A long time ago we prepared, did we not, various judging systems?

Mr. McDaniel: Yes.

Mr. Chase: We found that--you can correct me if this is wrong--by manipulating five points for flavor and five points given for color we could change the position of a variety of a list a great deal, and we also found that the points given for color were not related to inherently bad color but simply the result of poor handling, which also affects flavor. This is my reason for eliminating color and flavor from the schedule: it is _not_ to get away from the mild-flavored, pretty-colored kernels.

President Davidson: Mr. Chairman, I must say that I am inclined to agree with Mr. Stoke, for this reason: Even though color and flavor are very frequently the result of poor handling, we all know that we will say that the Stabler has the characteristic that is distinctive of quickly coloring up and quickly becoming rancid as distinguished from the Thomas, which does not. Now, those things are inherent in the two varieties, I think, and I don't think this committee should ignore altogether the matter of color and flavor, although I do think, perhaps, not so much weight might be given to those two qualities as had been given to them in the past. But they certainly decidedly influence the marketability for kernels from the point of view of home consumption. I think there is no question about that. I should be inclined to agree with Mr. Stoke, that those two qualities should not be ignored by the committee.

Dr. MacDaniels: I think the point would be to ignore them in their simply not being objective; you can't weigh or measure them. There is a motion properly seconded before the house. Are there further remarks?

Mr. Weber: Wouldn't there be just a certain amount of trial and error connected with it, and as you go along you will either add to or take off, and then you will get a correct system of judging? You have to start out with one system and if it is wrong, change it.

Dr. MacDaniels: I think it's a matter of doing something rather than nothing, for a schedule is always subject to improvement.

Mr. Stoke: I wish to point out we have made some tests together, and your personal tests and my personal tests ran very close together.

Dr. MacDaniels: That is right.

Mr. Stoke: And one member of the committee is always very conservative and his tests never run as high on any series as the others. I make a test and he makes a test, and his are always lower. Maybe, he doesn't recover as much; perhaps he isn't as expert a cracker. (Vote taken on the motion; carried.)

President Davidson: Let us adjourn until 8:30 tomorrow morning.

* * * * *

+A Picture from Our Most "Northern" Member+

John Davidson wrote in our 1943 report: "If any man deserves a bright NNGA medal, it is A. L. Young, of Brooks, Alberta." By planting his trees near enough to irrigation ditches in his "desert, cactus country," and protecting them from livestock, Mr. Young is able to get nuts on the hardier trees, but he reported that the nuts, "while of fair size, do not have fleshy kernels ... Butternuts are very sweet with fair size kernels ... Giant hickory from Ontario seems hardy but particular about the kind of soil ... Carpathian walnuts killed back quite a lot, so did most of my hybrid walnuts ... Some Manchurian walnuts ... got a setback with spring frosts ... Heartnuts got a rough deal last winter [1942-43.]" Mr. Young wrote to Dr. J. Russell Smith in 1948: "I have been using pollen of Broadview and Carpathian [Persian walnuts] on my blacks and while there are a lot of hybrid seedlings, none have fruited yet. On Peace River hazel [far Northern] I have been using Barcelona, Du Chilly and Gellatly pollen. Some of these hybrids look good, hardy, and produce good nuts ... A few varieties of oak are promising and fruiting."

At his location, Mr. Young expects winter temperature of -45°, and the lowest known [before 1940] was -62°F. Summer temperatures go above 100°F.

[Illustration: Fruiting black walnut grown at Brooks, Alberta, Canada, by member A. L. Young. The seed came from Ontario.]

+Tuesday Morning Session+

President Davidson: The only way to get started is to start. We are going to be given a look at the honeylocust situation in the South by Professor Moore of the Department of Horticulture of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute of Auburn. Mr. Moore.

The Present Outlook for Honeylocust in the South

J. C. MOORE, Department of Horticulture, Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama

Mr. Moore: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Before I start this discussion, just in case some of you are not familiar with honeylocust, its habit of growth, the size of the pods and the possibility of its yield, I'd like to take time out just to show a few slides, then I will go ahead with the discussion and give you some data on that honeylocust production. I believe if you would look at these slides before we start the discussion it would give you a good idea what the tree looks like, how it grows, the age at which it starts bearing and something about its general habits; it will help you a lot to understand what I have to say about it.

(Slides shown.)

This is the Millwood honeylocust. The pods will vary in size from about 12 inches to 14 inches in length, from one and a half to one and three-quarters inches in width, and the back part of the pod, something that I can't show on this particular type of picture, is very thick, and this back part of the pod, the thick part of it, is very rich in carbohydrates. We have the Calhoun and Millwood selections that have run as high, the Millwood a little over 36 per cent sugar and the Calhoun a little over 38 per cent sugar. The Millwood is a much higher yielding tree than the Calhoun. I will bring that out in a few minutes' time.

This is a borrowed slide and I don't know the history of these trees, but I judge that the tree is about three years old. We have had good yields on three-year-old trees at Auburn.

Here is a group of trees growing with a ground cover, and again I am not familiar with the ground cover, but just judging from the general appearance it looks like a picture that came from our files. If that is true then I know the story. The tree in the background is a Calhoun tree and the tree in the foreground is a Millwood growing in _Lespedeza sericea_ and I will bring out some points in a few minutes in the general discussion on the value of these two plants growing together as a combination.

I believe this is another tree that grew on my farm, and the year this picture was made this particular tree, eight years of age, bore 250 pounds of those luscious pods.

A close-up again, giving you the general size of the pod, how they are produced in masses, and you get quite a bit of weight in some of those thick-backed pods that you don't get from the thin pods that grow normally on seedling trees. The TVA has done quite a bit of work in selecting and developing the honeylocust, and I believe we give that particular organization credit for the development of both the Millwood and the Calhoun.

I thought it would be very valuable to give you just a glimpse of the habit of growth of those trees before I start with my general discussion so that you would understand something about what I am talking about.

Mr. Weber: Are these thornless?

Mr. Moore: These are thornless honeylocusts. The original parent trees of the Millwood and Calhoun had thorns. By vegetative propagation--they went out and cut scionwood on the limbs above the thorns and propagated the thornless twigs on thornless root stock--we now have a thornless honeylocust.

There has been quite a bit of disturbance in Alabama, especially in the northern part of the state, caused by native honeylocust. We have two or three characteristics that I think ought to be brought out about honeylocust. Some of out trees in the northern part of the state of Alabama have triple thorns. It is known as _G. triacanthos_ and the "tri-" part of that particular word, of course, gives us an idea of three thorns, and I have seen thorns at least 12 inches long that you could catch in your hand and use for a dagger, and it would be very dangerous. Now, some of those trees growing in the northern part of the state are very serious pests in pastures. Cows and horses and hogs are very fond of those lucious pods, and they will go around the trees and pick up every pod that falls, and occasionally a horse or cow will get close enough to the trunk of the tree and get speared with those thorns, and when the thorn pierces the skin there is a little tip on the end that breaks off and is left inside. When the usual infection that it carries get started from the part of the thorn that is left in the flesh, you get pus and, of course, later on the amputation of the leg, if it happens to be in the leg, of the horse. With the thornless type that is completely eliminated.

Then this other thing that I think ought to be brought out, the thornless or near-thornless type as a general rule has a better quality of pods than the ones with the long thorns. Now, it is true that the parent seedling trees of the Calhoun and the Millwood both had a small quantity of thorns when they were growing wild. After they were propagated vegetatively the thorns, of course, were eliminated by taking scion wood from above the thorns. But in general in our state, the thornless trees--and we do have a lot of thornless trees growing wild--have a higher sugar content in the pods than do the trees with thorns.

I just wanted to give you a general idea of what we have done with honeylocust in Alabama. In 1938 the TVA sent down some Millwood and Calhoun for test planting. We put those trees in two different types of planting. We had an integrated planting where we were trying to select at that time some good pasture plants, and, of course, we had something like a hundred different species in the one planting. The trees were planted relatively thick, but the larger trees were planted longer distances apart, and the intermediate trees intermediate distances apart, and then we had shrubs coming in under those. It was supposed to have been a three-story type of planting, black walnut in the upper story, honeylocust as an intermediate and shrubs for the ground. We were using different types of plums for the understory; then on the ground we had _Lespedeza sericea_. But from that we did get several different plant materials that did look promising, and we put the Calhoun honeylocust and the Millwood honeylocust in with that planting for trial, and they did so well that we expanded the honeylocust into another planting. I am very sorry that this latter planting had to be taken out.

Hillculture research went under in June of 1947, and the Horticulture Department took this work over, and they thought they could not support the honeylocust pasture program in Horticulture, and the plot, of course, was pulled out and planted in peaches.

Anyway, we do have some information I'd like to give you. The Dairy Department of the Alabama Experiment Station carried out quite an extensive feeding test over a two-year period to find out the value of these pods in the dairy ration. They substituted the honeylocust pods ground. Professor Eaton of the Dairy Department assures me that none of the seeds in those pods were cracked. They ground the pods with corn in order to take up some of the excess honey that is in the back of these pods so that they'd grind well, and they ground them in a hammermill, and the burrs were running far enough apart so that he assures me that very few of the seeds, if any, were ever cracked.

That has been somewhat of a discussion, among feed producers especially, recently, as to whether or not it would be profitable to grind those seeds in order to get the protein and fats that the seed has. There isn't a very high percentage of food in the seed itself, but you do get a little more protein and a little more fat if you grind the seed itself.

We have found in storage that weevils get in these seeds, but the weevil doesn't destroy the carbohydrates, and the weevil will only pierce the seed and make a hole in it. Then the intestinal juices of a cow will go in through this hole and they can digest the seed. That is something that comes along with storage.

I'd like to give you just something briefly on what the Dairy Department of Alabama Polytechnic found out about the general value of these pods. They found that honeylocust pods could be substituted in a dairy ration for oats, pound for pound. Now, that means that if you can get a high yield of honeylocust pods and substitute it in a dairy ration for oats that you just about have half of the grain problem solved.

I'd like then to follow that up to give you the average yields. Before I give you these average yields I'd also like to bring out this fact about the Calhoun and the Millwood honeylocust. Those trees are very peculiar in their habits of bearing. One year they will bear a heavy crop. The next year they will bear scarcely anything. They are definitely alternate bearing, and I think that alternate bearing has a physiological background behind it. How We can eliminate that physiological reaction is something else. But the years that the trees are heavily loaded with the fruit the amount of carbohydrates that it draws from the tree is so great that the tree doesn't have enough carbohydrates left to produce fruit the next year. I think it is the carbon-nitrogen ratio from the physiological standpoint, and, of course, if that is the case, then there is a possibility that you could eliminate or correct that carbon-nitrogen ratio by thinning during the blooming period. But when you see these results I think that you will agree that honeylocust has a place, even if they do bear only every other year.