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Controlled-Cross Hybrid Hazelnuts (Corylus spp. hybrids)

Controlled-Cross Hybrid Hazelnuts (Corylus spp. hybrids)

Regular price $157.50 USD
Regular price Sale price $157.50 USD
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Our Controlled-Cross Hybrid Hazelnuts possess all the finest attributes as our Selected Seedling Hybrid Hazelnuts with a few key distinctions. The Controlled Crosses are full siblings, meaning that these seedlings share the same parentage. They bear early in age, more homogenized shrub size of 6-8' tall and wide, and a condensed ripening window of 1.5 weeks, all useful traits for mechanical harvesting. 80% of the Controlled cross seedlings have flowered within the first year from planting and they have born crops more consistently across the population than selected seedlings. They exist in areas of heavy Eastern Filbert Blight presence and show no signs of susceptibility.  Harvest begins in Mid-August in southwestern Wisconsin. No other seedling on the market carries this combination of dominant traits in its' population. Most of their breeding trials and research had been conducted in USDA hardiness zones 4 and 5. 

 

The Controlled Cross backstory:

Since the 1990’s, Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC in collaboration with the University of MN St Paul, the Universities of WI Steven’s Point & Madison, an UW Extension, has been pioneering vegetative propagation of specific cultivars of hybrid hazelnut. Although early efforts proved to not be economically viable at the time for producing clonal cultivars for farmers, they were successful enough to establish isolated breeding nurseries for the production of controlled cross seedlings. In the earliest variety trials, seedlings from one parent proved to not produce at a young enough age. Seedlings from the second parent plant began to bear within two years. The initial nursery was slowly expanded for several years until it reached its current size. Seven other controlled cross nurseries have been established in several different states.

Seedlings from the first controlled cross were put into variety trials beginning in 2012 and were released publicly for the first time in 2017!


UW Extension, U IL Champaign and the Savanna Institute are all involved with data collection on the first out plantings of this material.


 

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