Beijing, China, 4-8 August 2025
The International Congress on Hazelnut takes place every four years, and this year it convened in Beijing (no word yet on where the 2029 Congress will be held). The proceedings of the Congress are being compiled and will be available for purchase next year. HGANZ will either purchase a copy, or access the articles that are relevant and/or interesting for NZ growers.
In the meantime, Trevor Ranford, the Executive of the HGA, attended and presented an overview of the Australian hazelnut industry, including some of the research that they have underway in Australia. He has kindly provided HGANZ with access to his presentation (both Power Point presentation and the paper version) so that we don’t have to wait for the proceedings.
There is a lot of information, so please take your time to have a look at it, but of particular note is the work underway in Theme 1 (looking at production systems). They predict they need between 1000-2000Ha of hazelnuts to meet current and future demand within Australia, with little left for export.
From the Beijing Evening News Facebook post. The grand entrance at the Conference Centre and hazelnut-activities.
In addition, Trevor gave us access to the presentation from Chile by Jorge Mohr. Chile is the country to watch, with about 8 000Ha of hazelnuts planted and coming to production in the next few years. The main cultivar is Tonde di Giffoni, but many of the new plantings are from OSU-bred (Oregon State University) cultivars; Yamhill, Tonde Pacifica and Jefferson. In 2023, nearly 50% of their harvest was sold to Italy (presumably to have chocolate poured onto them, or squeezed into a Nutella jar).
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