The NZ hazelnut industry. Where to from here?

By Murray Redpath

HGA newsletter October 2010.
Originally presented at HGANZ AGM, 2010

NZ hazel industry 2010:

NZ has over 430 hectares planted, most since 2000. Almost 100% of this area is planted in Whiteheart plus pollinisers so we have an industry dependent on successfully growing and marketing Whiteheart.

There has been a change in the orchard size since 2000 – from mainly orchards of 200-1000 trees to mainly orchards of over 1000 trees (see graphs below).
Fig. 1: Number of hazel trees per grower, SNGA hazelnut seminar 1996 (McNeil, 1996)
Percentage of attendees
60 50 40 30 20 10 0

<200 200-399 400-999 1000->2000 1999
Orchard tree number

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Pollenizer management in a hazelnut orchard

S.A. Mehlenbacher and A.N. Miller – Oregon State University, 1988

HGA newsletter, Winter 2003

Three factors must be considered in choosing pollinizer cultivars: 1) the amount of viable pollen produced, 2) compatibility, and 3) time of pollen shed.

The amount of viable pollen produced by a hazelnut tree is largely a function of the number of catkins on the tree and the viability of the pollen produced. Some cultivars set pollen in abundance Others typically set very few catkins. Some cultivars drop their catkins prior to pollen shed. Since one good Daviana catkin is estimated to produce 4 million pollen grains, the amount of pollen produced by a single pollinizer tree is tremendous.

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