2017 ASHS Annual Conference

Today, 99% of the US hazelnut crop is produced in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. However, efforts are currently underway to develop hazelnuts as a commercial crop in eastern North America. Hazelnuts are wind pollinated and self-incompatible with monecious flowers. While the pistillate flowers are known to be very cold hardy, the male flowers can be cold sensitive in the East, especially for the European hazelnut of commerce, Corylus avellana. The native American hazelnut, C. americana, as well as hybrids of C. avellana × C. americana, may be ideal to use as pollinizers in orchards since they offer increased cold hardiness, but their effect on kernel quality characteristics of European hazelnut has not been studied. In this study, 3 genotypes of C. avellana were hand pollinated with pollens from several accessions of C. americana, C. avellana, and hybrids of C. avellana × C. americana. Nuts were collected and evaluated for fruit set, physical characteristics, and oil quantity and fatty acid content. Results showed that using C. avellana × C. americana hybrids as pollinizers produced nuts with similar physical and chemical characteristics to those pollenated with C. avellana pollen. However, C. americana proved to be a poor pollinizer as the genotypes used in this studied appeared to be incompatible with the C. avellana genotypes used. The results of this study suggest we need to explore a wider diversity of C. americana pollen parents for use in orchards and that C. avellana × C. americana hybrids hold potential to be successful pollinators in commercial hazelnut orchards where cold tolerance is needed.