>> NARRATOR: They can be as small as a pea or as large as a bowling ball. Nutritional, durable, and versatile, the ancients worshiped them. Imperial navies were sustained by them, and tomorrow, they just might feed the world. From peanut butter to biofuel, from tree-shaking to high-speed cracking, from candied treats to cleaning the space shuttle, it's all "Nuts" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> >> NARRATOR: Diamond Foods, Stockton, California. Here in this 550,000-square-foot facility, more walnuts are processed daily than any other place in the world. >> FRED JACOBUS: We receive roughly 260 million pounds of walnuts each year, and we shell about 220 million pounds, making roughly 80, 90 million pounds of kernels. >> NARRATOR: Located in the heart of California's Central Valley, where 98% of all U.S. walnuts are grown, Diamond has been in the nut business for more than 90 years. Begun as a farmer's co-op in 1912, Diamond has been a leader in the transformation of this once-cottage industry into an agribusiness powerhouse. Americans consume more than one billion pounds of nuts annually, and the numbers are on the rise. The world loves nuts. >> GARY FORD: Nuts are nutrition-packed with a lot of minerals and vitamins. For example, walnuts contain the highest amount of omega-3 in any plant source, and studies have shown that eating nuts will actually reduce your cholesterol and avoid some cardiovascular problems. >> NARRATOR: But as commonplace as nuts have become in our daily regimen, the truth is, most of us can't answer the most basic questions about them. In fact, what exactly is a nut? Take almonds and pistachios. (<i> buzzer sounds</i> ) Technically, they're a drupe, not a nut, and grow more like a peach. Peanuts? (<i> buzzer sounds</i> ) A legume, and botanically speaking, more a pea than nut. Brazil nuts? (<i> buzzer sounds</i> ) Pine nuts? (<i> buzzer sounds</i> ) Cashews? (<i> buzzer sounds</i> ) Sorry. Technically, none of them meet the botanical definition. >> TOM GRADZIEL, PhD: The botany is important because of the structures, which give rise to your kernel, which give rise to that seed coat around the kernel, which give rise to the shell and such. From a culinary sense or from a day-to-day sense, it's a seed that's edible. >> NARRATOR: That means if you plant a nut, a tree or a plant will grow if properly tended. >> GAYLE McGRANAHAN, PhD: You could probably even take a walnut from the supermarket and bury it in a couple inches of soil and start a little walnut tree. Keeping it going would be something else. And if they'd been overheated, they'd be hard to grow. But it has been done. >> NARRATOR: In the United States, the rise of the American nut industry is a relatively recent phenomenon, given that nuts are steeped in the ancient histories of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Organized piles of petrified walnut shells have been found in Iran that date back to 7,000 B.C. And ancient Romans so loved walnuts that the Latin name means "belonging to royalty." >> FORD: They were actually known as the food for the gods and were associated with fertility. >> NARRATOR: Like the walnut, the almond is an ancient émigré, carried from its native Asia by travelers along the fabled Silk Roads. >> GRADZIEL: One of the ways you can mark the Silk Road is look at where you have almond trees being produced. So if you go back now through the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, for instance, you'll find all of these almonds, which were brought in initially from the Silk Road traveler. >> NARRATOR: Phoenician and Arab traders eventually spread almonds throughout Europe. >> GENE SPILLER, PhD: Because of their shell, they are well-protected, so if you keep them in a reasonable place, you can keep nuts in good shape, ready to eat, for quite a length of time. Just about every nut has traveled to a different location and a different country. >> NARRATOR: Both walnuts and almonds were first brought to America by Spanish missionaries traveling California's Camino Real in the 18th century. But until well into the 20th century, almond and walnut orchards struggled in the coastal climates where the missions had been built. >> FORD: After World War II, as Southern California commercial and real estate developments sort of took over some of the farmland, farmers moved to the fertile soils of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, and that's where our nuts are grown today. >> NARRATOR: Today, walnuts and almonds thrive in the Central Valley's Mediterranean climate, with its sun-drenched growing season. Each spring, millions of trees within these vast orchards begin to pollinate, the first stage in the development of the nuts. >> McGRANAHAN: The female flower is in here, nestled in the leaves, and what you would see is the two stigma surfaces, which are moist and are out there ready to catch the pollen that's flying through the air. The pollen comes from these flowers. This is a catkin, and mass quantities of pollen can be shed from just a few catkins. >> NARRATOR: While walnuts are pollinated by winds that scatter pollen for hundreds of miles, almonds are bee-pollinated. And because almond trees are fertile for only ten to 20 days every spring, growers must reach out to beekeepers around the world. >> GRADZIEL: The real challenge-- this is February here in the Central Valley, so we can have lots of rainstorms, lots of winds, frost and such. The number of days those bees actually move can be just a small proportion of those 20 days, so it makes it a real interesting time for the growers. >> NARRATOR: Every year, one million bee colonies are needed to pollinate California's almonds. >> GRADZIEL: We're having beekeepers from as far away as Florida and the Midwest. We even... um, some from Australia this last year to fill the supply. >> NARRATOR: Once the females are pollinated, the flowers fall away, and small green hubs begin to grow. By April, the almond fruit will develop to full size, leaving the more significant changes to occur within, in a process known as specialization. >> GRADZIEL: When you look at an almond, developing almond, if you cut through... and at this stage, the nut hasn't hardened yet. You see this white part? It's starting to become lignified, it's starting to become hard... and this will become the hull in the almond. And this white part is already starting to become the stone, or the shell of the almond. But also in this center part, you see the developing seed, and you can see the seed coat here on the outside, and then the kernel developing on the inside. >> NARRATOR: By the fall, the kernel and shell will be fully formed, protected by a leathery hull. Harvest begins in August for almonds, and in September for walnuts. All the nuts processed and sold throughout the following year are gathered during these intense eight-week periods. >> TOM BURLANDO: It used to be the varieties were bigger. There weren't as many nuts per tree. Now, they come into bearing quicker. They have better color, lighter color. They're more disease-resistant. That's where we've embraced technology and science. >> NARRATOR: Historically, walnut harvests were labor-intensive, requiring large crews who literally shook the nuts from the trees by hand. >> BURLANDO: You had people climb the tree, and they had what's called a mallet, which is basically a stick with a big rubber head on it. They would literally beat the limbs until the nuts fell out. The second way, they would have long poles-- ten, 15, 20 feet poles-- and they would tap the nuts. >> NARRATOR: Today, the nut industry utilizes mechanical shakers that feature powerful hydraulic arms, which extend around the trunk to rattle the nuts free. >> BURLANDO: Oh, it's the coolest thing in the world. It's like an earthquake. You can feel the earth move. I mean, everybody should feel it. It... You grab the tree, and you... Can I say, "You shake the hell out of it?" >> NARRATOR: Once the nuts have fallen to the ground, a windrow machine funnels them into narrow rows to be picked up by a sweeper. At this point, most nuts are still in their protective hulls, which must be removed. Historically, these hulls have served many uses, including as a source of dye for uniforms worn by Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War. The soldiers became known as "butternuts," a reference to the color and local walnut variety. After the hulls have been removed, the nuts are cleaned and inspected before being transported to Diamond's Stockton plant. Nearly half of all walnuts are immediately processed, prepped, and shipped for the holiday season, when many nuts are traditionally eaten. The remaining tons are held in vast on-site storage facilities. >> JACOBUS: Here we have 18 vessels that are refrigerated, and they hold about three million pounds, and then we have three other vessels that hold 20 million pounds. So we can store about 110 million pounds of walnuts on-site. >> NARRATOR: Walnuts can last for four months at room temperature, but nearly 24 months when kept in a controlled environment. When needed, stored walnuts are drawn from the vessels and enter a labyrinth of conveyors and chutes. 80% of them enter Diamond's mechanized cracking system, which shatters upwards of 1.1 million pounds of walnuts a day. Once the shell is sheared from the kernel, an advanced aeration system sucks the lighter-density shell particles upward, while the kernels continue on below. The kernels then fall onto a conveyor belt, traveling at 500 feet per minute, and begin a laser-sorting process. As each kernel passes through the scanning zone, the laser makes two near-instantaneous passes. The first scan alone is 99.8% effective. Based on the scan, the computer triggers small air sprayers to eject unwanted kernels and remaining shell bits. >> JACOBUS: If you'd gone into our plant 20 years ago, you'd have seen, literally, 30 or 40 tables with people standing at them, and the nuts being hand-sorted to reach the quality. And what you find is that people can only sort defects to a certain level of cleanliness. By putting the laser sorters in, we were actually able to double the capacity of our shelling plant and improve the quality. >> NARRATOR: Kernels removed from the flow because of color are chopped and diced for baking goods, candies, and ice cream, or ground to create walnut oil for cooking. Once sorting is completed, most whole kernels are sent immediately to packaging, while a growing percentage are dedicated to Diamond's new nut snacks. Roasted nuts, for example, are prepared using two different methods: dry roast and oil roast. >> JACOBUS: The dry roaster-- that's basically like a big oven. With the oil roaster, we're using a... really a new technology, where the nuts are put on a conveyor, and oil that's typically 280 to 300 degrees is cascaded over the nuts as they pass through the chamber. And that hot oil, as it passes over the nuts, cooks the nuts in a very uniform way. >> NARRATOR: Today, walnuts and almonds are California's leading agricultural export. But the West Coast isn't the only place where nuts and technology come together to make a better product, even if that product happens to stick to the roof of your mouth. "Nuts" will return on<i> Modern</i> <i>Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "Nuts" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> It's a staple in 75% of all American homes, and its rich flavor and creamy texture are widely popular in nations around the world. It is, of course, peanut butter. Peter Pan has been making peanut butter for nearly 90 years, and is one of the founding brands of the industry. But while the company's roots date back decades, the Peter Pan factory in Sylvester, Georgia, is anything but antique. Not only does the facility have one of the world's largest oven roasters, but it also features sophisticated grinding, cooling, and packaging systems. >> TOM GENTLE: It's an extremely automated facility. The whole front end of the process, which would come from receiving of the peanuts, all the way through cleaning, roasting, blanching, and the entire formulation process-- we use only about 12 people to run. 12 people will produce close to 50,000 pounds of peanut butter an hour. >> NARRATOR: Remarkably, Peter Pan peanut butter has used the same basic ingredients since its inception in 1928: sugar, salt, a blended oil-based stabilizer that insures the natural oils don't separate, and 90% Georgia peanuts. Peanuts are native to South America, where they were among history's earliest domesticated foods. Centuries later, Portuguese traders carried peanuts from Brazil to Africa, where the crop remains a vital commodity even today. Sadly, it was via the African slave trade that peanuts returned across the Atlantic to America's shores. After the Civil War, peanuts became commonplace, but peanut butter didn't emerge until the late 1890s. And contrary to popular belief, it was not invented by George Washington Carver. Carver's pioneering peanut research, especially the process known as "nitrogen fixation," made peanuts a truly viable crop for Southern farmers. And Carver is rightly credited with devising hundreds of additional uses for peanuts, just not peanut butter. Instead, a Midwestern doctor debuted peanut butter at the 1893 Chicago Exposition, selling it as a healthy resource for patients. >> GENTLE: He needed a nutritious source of protein that they could also digest and handle and actually want to eat. In 1895, Dr. John H. Kellogg and his brother W.K. patented their own variety of peanut butter, another in their long list of food inventions, including Kellogg's now famous cereals. >> GENTLE: The big change between the peanut butter he was making and peanut butter as you know it today is the roasting process. He actually used a steam process that didn't generate that roasted flavor that you'd know today. >> NARRATOR: For the next 20 years, dozens of local producers competed in the peanut butter market, but the shelf life for these products was short, and the natural oils in the butter separated. In the early 1920s, Peter Pan became the first company to market a stabilized peanut butter. This new peanut butter could last on store shelves for more than a year, and with it, a national industry was born. Peanuts are planted after the last frost in April. The peanut plant is unusual, because it flowers above ground but fruits below ground. The flowers pollinate themselves, then the petals fall off as the peanut ovary begins to form. This budding ovary, called a "peg," grows away from the plant on a vine that penetrates the soil. The peanuts mature below the ground and are harvested in the fall. Tractors armed with digger-shakers move steadily through the fields. Their long blades dig into the ground and cut the taproot, after which the plant is lifted and shaken until the peanuts fall free. Left to dry for two or three days, the peanuts are then collected, shelled, and loaded into trucks for distribution, including to Peter Pan Peanut Butter. >> GENTLE: We will bring in well over 100 million pounds of peanuts each year, and during our peak season, we'll actually produce well over half a million jars a day. >> NARRATOR: Once the raw peanuts arrive, it's time to start the highly automated process. They're cleaned, and then roasted in an oven that measures more than 150 feet long. >> GENTLE: We'll roast approximately 40,000 pounds of peanuts per hour, and we'll roast those to bring out a roasted flavor and also give color to peanut butter. >> NARRATOR: After blanching and color-sorting, the peanuts are ground twice, then later sent through a homogenizer to insure the smoothest possible product. >> GENTLE: The peanut butter is taken at very high pressure-- over 5,000 pounds of pressure-- through this homogenizer, and that whips it into a butter. >> NARRATOR: Each stage is monitored closely in the factory's central computerized hub, including the rapid cooling of the peanut butter to insure its integrity and prepare it for the jar fillers. >> GENTLE: During our peak season, we'll produce well over half a million jars of peanut butter per day. Each jar of standard size peanut butter will have a pound of peanuts per jar. >> NARRATOR: And how do they make crunchy peanut butter? >> GENTLE: Crunchy peanut butter is almost the same as the creamy except for one primary difference. When the peanuts are taken from the finished, roasted nut bin that's already been cleaned and color-sorted, some will go to the paste stream, and some will go to be chopped into the size we want for our crunchy granules. Those two different streams of peanuts will meet back just prior to the filler, where we'll blend those crunchy granules right back in with our creamy peanut butter. >> NARRATOR: Since the 1890s, when it was first invented, peanut butter has been an important staple of the American diet. (<i> bell clanging</i> ) Yet its medicinal roots have not been forgotten, and today, a new peanut butter product saves lives. It's called Plumpy'Nut. For decades, international relief organizations like UNICEF have sought to stave off malnutrition and starvation with powdered milk formulas. But on the ground, there were many challenges. >> DAN TOOLE: Feeding children with therapeutic milk had a couple of disadvantages. One: milk, you have to mix with water. Water is one of the hardest things in emergencies because if you don't have clean water, you actually aggravate malnutrition; you aggravate diarrhea. So, they wanted a product that would be packaged, that was safe, to which you didn't have to add water, and that's how they came up with this. >> NARRATOR: Introduced in 1999, Plumpy'Nut comes in 500-kilocalorie packets. It can be eaten right from the bag, and has a shelf life of two years. >> TOOLE: Anyone who has a child knows it's really, really hard to get a child to eat when that child does not want to eat, and malnourished kids do not want to eat. What's amazing about Plumpy'Nut is that you hand that to a child, you put a little bit in its mouth, and the child starts eating. So, it makes our job so much easier. >> NARRATOR: Because of the high-protein content of peanuts, Plumpy'Nut can reverse malnutrition in children in just over four weeks. >> TOOLE: Normally, recovery from malnutrition takes a very long time, and what we've seen historically is that kids start to do a bit better, and then they fall back. What we've seen with Plumpy'Nut is that about 75% of the kids just get better. It takes about 40 days. It's about $50 per treatment. With the success rate, it's a great product. So, there are huge advantages for the mother, for the family, and for us, UNICEF, making sure that we're reaching as many kids as we can. >> NARRATOR: Imagine-- all that hope from one little nut. "Nuts" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "Nuts" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> Crack 'em. Hammer 'em. Crush 'em with a rock. All that stands between you and your favorite nut are the shells, and as the remarkable collection of 5,000 historic nutcrackers at the Leavenworth Nut Museum shows, we've come a long way from cracking nuts with simple stones. But for all their style and design, very few hand crackers in the museum, or in the world, can handle the hardest shell in the nut kingdom: the macadamia. >> CHARLES YOUNG: It takes about 300 PSI, pounds per square inch of pressure, to actually crack those, so they're a very, very hard nut to crack. >> NARRATOR: No company in the world is more familiar with just how hard the macadamia shell is than Hawaii's Mauna Loa, which has been growing and processing the nuts for nearly 60 years. Comprised of more than 10,000 acres throughout the islands, Mauna Loa receives 33 million pounds of in-shell macadamia nuts annually; and of those, 90% will be cracked using a proprietary high-tech cracking system designed specifically for macadamias. >> LUKE OCTAVIO: We'll crack around 8,500 or 9,000 pounds per hour, with all seven crackers. >> NARRATOR: The challenge: to not simply shatter the shell but keep a high percentage of the whole nut kernel intact. In the old days, the only choice was to crack the nuts with hammers, one nut at a time, as people had done for centuries. Although closely associated with Hawaii, macadamias are native to the Australian rain forest, where the hard shell protected the nut from a host of tropical predators and diseases. The macadamia's rich flavor was prized by aboriginal tribes, who simply smashed open the nuts with rocks, featuring small divets. In 1858, a colonial botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller, was the first to catalog the species, naming the nut in honor of fellow explorer John Macadam, who had recently perished at sea. The first macadamias didn't arrive in Hawaii until nearly three decades later, when entrepreneur George Purvis decided they would make an attractive addition to the Hawaiian landscape. >> YOUNG: Purvis is actually credited with bringing the first plants back to us from Australia, back to Hawaii. The interest at that time was really in its ornamental value. It's-It's a very beautiful-looking tree, and, uh... But when he discovered that the nuts from them could be quite tasty, that began interest in commercialization of the-the nuts themselves. >> NARRATOR: Hawaii's climate and rich volcanic soil created an ideal environment, but in the decades to follow, both the tree and the nut proved surprisingly difficult for commercial cultivation. >> YOUNG: There's an outer fibrous husk, and then there's this hard shell. So the nut itself, when it falls from the tree, actually only about 15% of it is edible, and so it's a very expensive nut to grow, a very expensive nut to process, and you get very little kernel at the end of the day. >> NARRATOR: Only when modern cracking technology emerged in the 1980s did the macadamia industry begin to erupt. The cracking process begins in a series of drying tanks that reduce the nut's natural moisture from 20% to less than 2%. This shrinks the kernel within, and renders the hard shell more brittle. >> OCTAVIO: We have about 48 tanks, and we hold about four and a half million pounds of drying shell. When they come over here, we start it off with a very low temperature, about 100 degrees. Soon as the moisture starts to go down, we'll ramp it up to about 125 for about another two days, and we'll finish it off at about 140 to 145, for a total drying cycle of about ten days. >> NARRATOR: Once dried, the now-brittle macadamias enter one of Mauna Loa's seven separate crackers. Inside each cracker, two metal rollers spin at a constant high speed. The individual macadamia nut falls into a set gap between the rollers, cracking the shell along its vertical seam. The result: more than seven million pounds of shelled, whole macadamia kernels. These kernels are then either sent to packaging or further processed into one of Mauna Loa's many product lines. And in case you're wondering what becomes of all the broken shells... >> YOUNG: We're very, very, uh, environmentally friendly processing. The shell, after it's been cracked, is returned to our boiler, where we burn it to produce steam and convert steam into energy, so we consume everything that comes out of the field. It's used either as a mainstream product or as a byproduct. >> NARRATOR: And Mauna Loa isn't alone. The truth is, science now employs cracked nut shells in many remarkable ways. >> Three, two, one. Booster ignition and liftoff of space shuttle<i> Endeavor.</i> >> NARRATOR: Eight minutes into every space shuttle mission, the two solid-fuel rocket boosters fall away. >> Booster officer confirms good separation to solid rocket boosters. >> NARRATOR: Once back on Earth, the scorched and damaged boosters are recovered and then cleaned and prepped for the next mission. To do so, NASA uses ground walnut shells, which are sprayed across the booster surfaces like sandblasting. That product is supplied by Shell-Pro in Lodi, California, where more than five million pounds of almond, walnut, and apricot pit shells are ground every month. >> ROCKY SUESS: Walnut shell can be ground down to sizes that are very similar to sand, and as a result, you can use it in sandblasting equipment. You just substitute it. Because it's dense, it has that hardness they want, but it is not so hard and abrasive, like silica sand would be, that it's going to damage what they blast with it. >> NARRATOR: But blast-cleaning isn't the only application that Shell-Pro or its customers have discovered for the product. >> SUESS: Any time you've used one of those scrubs that has a gritty texture to it, you've probably used a soap that has walnut shell in it. >> NARRATOR: Shell-Pro has three different kinds of grinders, which produce 15 standard grades of ground shell, and can be modified to create custom grades when needed. >> SUESS: This line behind me right here is producing material that will be going into the ground while they're drilling for oil. When the material comes in, it looks like this. It's just broken walnut shells. And when we put it in the bag, it looks something like this. >> NARRATOR: Today, ground walnut shells are used as a packing material for dynamite, for water filtration, to make plywood, and even Hollywood special effects. >> SEUSS: We had one company that shipped large quantities of it over, actually, to the Middle East to be able to reproduce sandstorms. Even though they got a lot of sand over there, they wanted a... They wanted a safer environment. >> NARRATOR: Innovation has become a hallmark of the nut industry, but for scientists and breeders, even America's oldest nut, the pecan, still has room for improvement. "Nuts" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "Nuts" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> The Seychelles Islands, 150 miles off the coast of Africa-- a place as pristine as it is remote, where the ecological balance has been maintained for millions of years. Here, atop trees that tower more than 150 feet in the air, grows the world's largest nut: the coco de mer, which takes seven years to develop and will weigh more than 70 pounds when it finally comes crashing to the ground. Too heavy to float to other shores, the coco de mer has never escaped its island home. Marooned and isolated, this remarkable nut grows nowhere else in the world. It is a variety of one. About 10,000 miles away in the Brazos River Valley at College Station, Texas, the USDA Pecan Breeding Program houses the single largest repository of pecan varieties in the world. Unlike the coco de mer, the pecan has a rich history, featuring many varieties, filled with genetic diversity. Pecans are the most famous nuts indigenous to North America. Originating in the South, native trees spread from Mexico to Illinois, where pioneers first encountered them. Analyzing how those native pecans adapted to different climates and locales, and their genetic story, offers both scientific and commercial opportunities for today's pecan industry. >> L.J. GRAUKE, PhD: If we understand the mechanisms that the trees have adapted over time to survive in their areas, we can do a better job of choosing those adaptations and recombining them. >> NARRATOR: Pecans are now an $800-million-a-year industry, and processors employ the latest crackers, color- sorters, and packaging equipment. Yet pecan growers can no longer rely on the native orchards that once fueled the industry. Instead, growers have begun to ask, "Can we make a better nut?" >> GEORGE RAY McEACHERN, PhD: Pecans only bear every other year, so we have been struggling with this alternate bearing since the very beginning of time. But we do now have growers that can go in and produce quality pecans every year, and that's a very difficult task. >> NARRATOR: 30 years ago, common knowledge held that a new pecan tree didn't bear a commercial crop for ten years. Today, that time has been cut in half, in large part because of genetically improved cultivars and a breeding process called crossing. >> TOMMY THOMPSON, PhD: We may have one parent, for instance, that's very high-yielding, but it's, like, susceptible to scab disease. So we might take that one parent that's very high-yielding and cross it to another parent that doesn't yield so well, but has extremely good scab resistance. And then we grow out those progeny, and then we start testing them for both of those characteristics. >> NARRATOR: In the 1880s, E.E. Risien, an Englishman living in San Saba, Texas, was the first to use crossing, and in so doing, launched the commercial pecan industry. >> McEACHERN: He'd have a contest every fall where he would pay five dollars for the best barrel of quality pecans. And one day, he found a sensational barrel of pecans. He asked the man to take him to the tree. He took that tree, collected a thousand nuts, planted the nuts, and released over 30 cultivars, some of which we grow today, the most important of which was the Western pecan, which is the #1 pecan planted in the world. >> NARRATOR: To create a new cultivar, breeders collect the male pollen of the first desired variety. Then they bag the female stigma of the other desired variety, preventing any unwanted male pollen from reaching it. >> THOMPSON: Then we wait about a week or ten days until the stigmatic surface of these flowers become receptive, and at that time, we take pollen, and we put it in our pollination bag like this, and then put this together. Then we shake out a little bit of the pollen in our glass loop there. Not very much, just a small amount. And we insert that needle up through the base of the bag, and give it a squeeze. And then we get a cloud of pollen in that bag, and it's just about the right amount to effectuate pollination and get nuts set. >> NARRATOR: In the fall, the potential cultivar will yield its first nuts, which the breeder then plants to see if the future tree possesses the desired traits. That can take years. >> THOMPSON: It's about a 20-year process from the time we make a cross until the time we release a new USDA variety. >> NARRATOR: Since the breeding program was founded in 1930, USDA breeders have released 25 new varieties, three in the last ten years. Once approved, new cultivars are made available to tree growers like Hal Berdoll, owner of Berdoll's Pecan Farm and Nursery. For Berdoll, the goal isn't to create new cultivars, but to adapt and propagate existing varieties to the day-to-day practicalities of commercial growing. >> BERDOLL: In the nursery here, there's around 75 or 80,000 trees. In the orchard, there's around six or 7,000 trees, something like that. >> NARRATOR: Often, this requires grafting and forcing two distinct varieties together to take advantage of their unique characteristics. Grafting is an art that dates back centuries. In 1846, a slave named Antoine was the first to graft young pecan trees at the famous Oak Alley Plantation outside of New Orleans. >> BERDOLL: This particular tree here was budded last summer in August. We strip the bark off the native tree there, and that causes this little bud to come out and start growing. That forced all the sap that was coming up to come out of this bud patch, and you can see now, it has came out and started growing. And by the end of this growing season, this tree will be probably six feet tall. >> NARRATOR: Today, those grafting techniques are supplemented with fertilizers, advanced irrigation, and in-ground growing containers, rather than pots above the ground. And the results have been remarkable. >> BERDOLL: What we're looking at here is a tree, a year later from what we were just looking at. This is where that graft or bud was put on last spring. It grew all the way up to here, about six feet tall last summer. And now, you see it's come out this spring, and this is the amount of growth it's grown in one month, from right here where my finger is to there, which is two and a half or three feet. >> NARRATOR: Today, the pecan industry is thriving in Texas, and throughout the South and Southwest, but from a genetics point of view, it's just getting started. >> McEACHERN: We've only been growing pecans 150 years. We don't have-- like olives or grapes or apples-- we don't have three or 4,000 years of background information. We're at the very beginning. >> NARRATOR: But pecans aren't the only industry undergoing a modern facelift, as technology makes these ancient favorites a rising star. "Nuts" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "Nuts" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> Entrepreneurship has always been a hallmark of the nut industry. Nowhere in recent years is that spirit more evident than in the pistachio business, including Paramount Farms, now the largest integrated grower, processor, and distributor in the world. Pistachios are the youngest commercial nut industry in the United States, beginning only in the 1960s. For centuries, Iran was the world's foremost producer, but the revolution in 1979 led to new opportunities for American growers. Today, Paramount Farms has 28,000 acres of pistachio orchards throughout the San Joaquin Valley, the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Like all nuts, pistachios pose unique challenges for growers and processors. Beginning in early May, pistachios grow in a grape-like cluster. During the next three months, a hull, shell, and kernel form within each nutlet. >> ANDY ANZALDO: Once the shell is hardened, the kernel itself will begin to fill in July. That filling process takes about six weeks. It actually puts pressure on the shell to get it to split. >> NARRATOR: Once split open, shakers bring them cascading down onto large tarps that insure the pistachios never touch the ground. Unlike walnuts or almonds, a pistachio's hull is still wet when ripe. Left on the ground, that wet hull will begin to dry, causing discoloration. >> ANZALDO: In Iran, typically, the pistachios would hit the ground, and they would sun dry them. Well, when you sun-dry pistachios, that hull would adhere to the shell, and it also stains the shell. >> DAVE BLANCHAT: So what they did is they dyed them all red so you couldn't see it, and they look consistent, so... We don't dye pistachios red. >> NARRATOR: Fresh from the trees, the pistachio hulls are removed with a powerful water flush. >> BLANCHAT: We do that with about 10,000 gallons of water a minute. So, in the course of eight weeks, we'll use about three to 400 million gallons of water in our hulling operations at all our facilities. The product then goes from the hulling operation through a synch float process. It's the first real quality split. And what we're looking at there is to separate the mature from the less mature. Mature stuff sinks, and the immature stuff floats. Real, real crazy idea, but it works very well. >> NARRATOR: After being dried, the pistachios enter a pin sorter in order to separate the open-shelled nuts from the closed ones. Thousands of tiny pins, rotating in a large drum, hook into the shell openings and lift them onto an upper conveyor, while the closed shells tumble away. The pistachios are electronically color-sorted, hand-sorted, and then sized before roasting. Each year, Paramount harvests 20 million wet pounds of pistachios per day from the field, while processing three to four million pounds per week. Today, pistachios are the second-fastest developing nut industry in the country. >> DOMINIC ENGELS: 99% of the pistachios grown in the United States are grown right here in the state of California. It's a crop that, in the last four years, in terms of dollar sales, has grown 28% compound annual growth. >> NARRATOR: But none of it would have been possible without USDA breeder William Whitehouse, who, in 1930, was the first to bring pistachio nuts to the United States. In fact, so enamored of the pistachio was Whitehouse that he entered Iran through Russia at a time when Westerners were discouraged from traveling there. In six months, he collected 20 pounds of pistachios, which he smuggled back and planted. >> ANDY ANZALDO: He brought these nuts back to Chico, California, which is about 600 miles north of where we're standing today. And then he worked with these nuts over 20 years. And, after this whole process, he came up with three varieties that he liked. And then he spent another five years taking apart those varieties. And, at the end, he came up with one variety: the Kerman variety. >> NARRATOR: Whitehouse's Kerman became the bedrock of today's commercial pistachio industry. >> ANZALDO: Kerman is still being planted in 99% of the orchards, and that is the white shell, nice, big, open split, a green kernel with a nice, delicate taste. So what he did is truly amazing for California agriculture. >> NARRATOR: That same entrepreneurial spirit still exists in many of today's nut producers, including those searching for sustainable alternative energy such as biodiesel. The Indian jatropha nut is nearly 50% oil, and can be combusted as lamp fuel without being refined. It burns with a clear, smoke-free flame that Indian farmers have used since the 17th century. Now American entrepreneurs have imported the nut to the United States, where the oil can be refined for use in modern diesel engines. >> RUSS TEALL: It's not grown on prime agricultural land. It's grown on sandy, degraded wastelands, so we were able to get a USDA permit for bringing the seeds back to California last fall, and start on the coast of California where the the climatic conditions are such that we should be able to adapt a variety to this region fairly quickly. >> NARRATOR: Currently, work with the jatropha remains strictly research, but the plans are big, and the hopes large. >> TEALL: The amount of oil that a jatropha plantation would produce after the first 18 months, in a six-mile radius around a plant, would generate about three million gallons a year. When the plant reaches maturity at seven to ten years, that's more like 30 million gallons a year, so a very large amount of oil out of a relatively small land. >> NARRATOR: Practical, flavorful, nutritious. Scientists now believe there are 30 million nut varieties. And who knows? One day, one of them might just change the world. How's that for a nutty idea? <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font>
