On Mar. 27, 2024, the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) announced it had completed a $2.5 million dollars 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. In the new facility, researchers will 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.