Pecan research

jamie warren is live in las cruces tonight. she reports from our new mexico mobile newsroom. jamie? 4.4 million dollars is going towards figuring out the genetic make up of a pecan. if you take a look here, these are pecans fresh off the farm at dixie ranch here in las cruces. the manager there tells me this new research could save him a great deal of uncertainty. greg daviet showed me his pecan trees on his 250 acre plot of land. currently nmsu is studying the plant. in fact one hundred thousand cloned trees are sitting in glass bottles inside their research facility. they’re hoping to let farmers like daviet know what traits will make up a pecan before the tree is even planted. such as the pecans quality, size and whether it can sustain a severe drought. daviet says he knows first hand just how critical that moment is after waiting so long for the plant to harvest. 19:52:51 “there’s always a sens of relief that i didn’t make a tragic mistake this year this isn’t the year that 19:52:51 “there’s always a sens of relief that i didn’t make a tragic mistake this year this isn’t the year that i’m going to bankrupt the family and the farm and we make it to the end so certainly those questions as a manager have i done those things to be successful and then that sense of relief when we get to the end of the product is hopefully better than expected.” daviet says he would be interested in enhancing the quality and size of his pecans to make them more profitable. while the research will take years to develop, the findings will eventually be shared with farmers. chief meteorologist doppler dave speelman has the borderland under an abc-seven first alert … the storms