There’s a New Horizon In the Making for Hazelnut Growers

trio of hazelnuts

Hybrid hazelnut cultivars and seedlings are the best cold-climate options for Upper Midwest growers. European cultivars and American seedlings are not ideal.

The future of growing hazelnuts in the Upper Midwest lies in hybrid cultivars, according to Jason Fischbach, a Woody Crops Specialist with University of Wisconsin Extension. Unfortunately, that prospect has been slow to arrive for potential growers.

“Propagators have struggled mightily to make clonal copies of hybrids,” Fischbach says. “Stool-bed layering works but is slow. No one has yet figured out tissue culture with the hybrids, and thus, we don’t yet have plants available for growers.”

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Fischbach co-leads the Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative (UMHDI), a collaboration of the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. As the organization continues to monitor the availability of hybrid cultivars on its website, it encourages aspiring growers to first get their feet wet with available hybrid seedlings.

“If you’re a new grower, if you’ve never grown hazelnuts before, I highly recommend you buy seedlings and get them established to get experience — so that you don’t mess up (later),” Fischbach says. “That’s going to be really important as you then get on the waiting lists and get access to these (hybrid) cultivars.”

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Hybrid cultivars and seedlings are two of the four plant material categories from which U.S. hazelnut growers have to pick. The other two, European cultivars and American seedlings, “are not really options for us in the Upper Midwest,” Fischbach says.

Approximately 130 hazelnut growers comprise the Upper Midwest, according to UMHDI, accounting for nearly 135 acres of production in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Hybrid Cultivars

Why are hybrid cultivars the end goal in the Upper Midwest? At least in theory, Fischbach says, hybrids between Corylus americana and C. avellana combine the winter hardiness and resistance to Eastern filbert blight (EFB) of C. americana with the thinner shells and higher kernel yields of C. avellana.

Multiple breeding programs, including UMHDI, are engaged in developing such cultivars, Fischbach says. First-generation selections being tested by UMHDI include ‘Eric 4-21’, ‘Rose 9-2’, and ‘Minar 342’. “The goal is to get 10 to 12 of these out to growers, but it’s just taking time with the tissue culture,” he says.

Grimo Nut Nursery, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has produced a number of selections, including ‘Northern Blais’, ‘Dawn’, and ‘Marion’, all three of which the company recommends for the Upper Midwest.

“From what we’ve seen so far, ‘Northern Blais’ and ‘Marion’ in Southern Wisconsin are doing well,” Fischbach says. “In Northern Wisconsin and up in Northern Minnesota, they have not performed as well and may not be sufficiently winter hardy. But we’re not going to make any firm conclusions on that for a couple more years.”

Other sources of consortium cultivars include Foggy Bottom Farms, in Columbus, NJ, Great Plains Nursery, in Weston, NE, North American Plants, in McMinnville, OR, and Z’s Nutty Ridge, in McGraw, NY.

Hybrid Seedlings

While recommended until hybrid cultivars finally arrive, hybrid seedlings have drawbacks themselves.

Wisconsin-based Forest Agriculture Enterprises — one of nine hybrid seedling suppliers listed on UMHDI’s website — initially provided UMHDI with seedlings in 2011. Testing and documentation have occurred ever since, providing what Fischbach calls a “sobering” snapshot into the limitations that seedlings currently have in terms of supporting commercial production.

“There’s just so much variability, it makes it hard to be commercial,” he says. “You’re certainly going to get nut production off these — 300, 400, 500 pounds of kernel per acre, which is nothing to sneeze at. Whether you make money growing it, that’s another question. But you can certainly get nut production from a hobby or small-scale standpoint.”

In addition to serving as learner plants en route to hybrid cultivars, hybrid seedlings can fill roles in pollinizing, wildlife habitat, nut production, and participatory plant breeding.

“Get seedlings ordered as soon as you can, plant those, and start to learn your production system,” Fischbach says.

European Hazelnut Cultivars

Wouldn’t it be nice, Fischbach asks, if these hazelnuts, which thrive in the Pacific Northwest, could be grown in the Upper Midwest? They have evolved over decades of breeding, leading to many quality plant materials, he says. Currently most popular are ‘Yamhill’ and ‘Jefferson,’ which boast single-gene resistance to EFB.

Unfortunately, both cultivars suffered winter injury during trials in Ontario. And EFB, which is native to the Upper Midwest, overcame the resistance that was in ‘Yamhill’ and ‘Jefferson’. “So, for two reasons, we can’t grow these,” Fischbach says.

The same goes for four new European hazelnut cultivars — ‘Raritan’, ‘Monmouth’, ‘Hunterdon’, and ‘Somerset’ — recently released by Rutgers University. Each is resistant to EFB. However, they are only recommended to USDA hardiness zones 6 and 7 and have not yet been trialed in the Upper Midwest.

“The first of this plant material will go into our joint performance trials this spring, so we’ll start to get some information,” Fischbach says, “but quite frankly we fully expect most of this is going to suffer from winter injury.”

On the bright side, Rutgers Hazelnut Breeder Tom Molnar is testing selections from colder European regions,” so we expect better hardiness in some of his future releases,” Fischbach says.

American Hazelnut Seedlings

These plants have been widely available over the years to growers in the Upper Midwest, thanks to distribution by the Department of Natural Resources, private nurseries, and land conservation departments. They have adapted to the region and are disease resistant. Unfortunately, their kernels are, for the most part, not large enough to be commercial, Fischbach says.

“The yields can be pretty high, but more or less the consensus is that these American hazelnuts on average are generally too small,” he says.

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