Abstract: With the increasing planting and consumption of gorgon nuts, the requirement of production mechanization for gorgon nuts has gradually become a bottleneck in the development of gorgon production. The design of the nut cracking machine has been a key problem in post-processing for gorgon nuts. In order to provide basic data for mechanical design of nut cracking machine, the impacts of maturity degree and stress direction on mechanical properties were analyzed by compression and shear tests. The results showed that the strain-stress curves of gorgon nuts in compression and shear tests were similar when they cracked, but the originating location and extending modes of cracks were different; The breaking force, deformation, strain energy and strain energy density of a gorgon nut increased with the increase of its maturity degree. Theoretically, it was easier to break gorgon nuts by using sheared force which perpendicular to the direction of navel. The research can provide foundational parameters for developing nut cracking machine of gorgon nuts.