Verma, B.P., Univ of Georgia, Griffin, United States
Heaton, E.K., Univ of Georgia, Griffin, United States
Zaltzman, A., Univ of Georgia, Griffin, United States

Early harvest of mature pecans has the advantage of providing kernels of higher quality than normally possible when the nuts naturally dry on tree and fall on the ground. At this stage of harvesting, the shucks are light green and partially open. Thus, there is a need to develop mechanisms and machinery for removing the shucks from the mature nuts. This article presents a new concept using two high friction belts for shucking the nuts. Under the best operating conditions, 100% of the pecans were completely shucked.