190 



THE PEANUT— THE UNPREDICTABLE LEGUME 



Machine shelling often breaks the skin on a large percentage of nuts 

 and sometimes damages the seed by crushing or breaking the nuts in 

 half. This is especially true if ungraded peanuts of uneven sizes are being 

 shelled. It is also true with graded nuts, if the machine is not properly ad- 

 justed. When the seed coat is broken, seed-rot fungi have easy access to 

 the kernel and cause decreased germination. Because of the poor stands 

 that have been obtained, machine-shelled seed have often been found 

 unsatisfactory. However, improvement in machines used for shelling, ad- 

 ditional experience with their operation, and improved seed disinfectants 

 have resulted in better germination of machine-shelled seed. Relatively 

 small commercial shellers designed especially for handling seed peanuts 



Table 23. — Effect of Time of Shelling and Seed Treatment on the Emergence 

 OF Hand-Shelled and Machine-Shelled Runner Peanuts, Main Station, 



Auburn, 1946 



are now being developed. One such machine known as the U. S. D. A. 

 Peanut Sheller described by Brown and Reed (4) shows much promise 

 for use by relatively small producers. Using medium-vitality peanuts 

 shelled on this, machine and treated, Wilson (19) obtained equally good 

 results from hand- and machine-shelled peanuts. These results are re- 

 ported in table 23. 



Seed Treatment 



Seed treatment with proper seed disinfectants has been found to 

 improve the germination of both hand-shelled and machine-shelled pea- 

 nuts for seed. Hand-shelled seed and unshelled seed respond less to seed 

 treatment than do machine-shelled seed. In fact, good stands can often be 

 obtained from planting the recommended quantities from either hand- 

 shelled or unshelled seed without treatment. Treating of hand-shelled 

 seed usually results in 5 to 10 percent increase in emergence. Treatment 

 of machine-shelled seed, however, often increases the stands by 30 to 50 



