Cultivars or Seedlings?
Building the Future of Hazelnuts
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One of the first decisions every hazelnut grower makes is whether to plant cultivars, seedling-type hazelnuts, or a combination of both. The answer depends on your goals.
If your priority is maximizing commercial profitability, cultivars are the best choice for predictable production. If your goal is contributing to the long-term, on-farm research and development of genetic improvement of hazelnuts in the Upper Midwest, seedling populations play an essential role. We believe the strongest future combines both approaches. Read more to learn why! |
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Understanding Cultivars
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A cultivar (sometimes called a variety) is a vegetatively propagated plant selected for desirable characteristics such as high yields, kernel quality, disease resistance, plant architecture, or other proven traits.
Cultivars offer growers greater consistency and predictability because every plant is genetically identical. When selecting cultivars, consider:
Because hazelnuts cannot self-pollinate, orchards require reproductively compatible pollinizers. One of the simplest ways to reduce compatibility risk is to include pollinator rows of genetically diverse seedling-type plants. At the same time, genetic uniformity comes with risk. A disease, insect, or changing market that affects one cultivar can affect every plant of that cultivar. For this reason, we recommend planting at least five different cultivars whenever possible, along with diverse seedling pollinator rows to increase orchard resilience. |
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Understanding Seedling-Type Hazelnuts
Hazelnut seedlings are, quite simply, plants grown from seed.
Hazelnuts are relatively easy to grow from seed but very difficult to vegetatively propagate, which is one reason seedling-type hazelnuts are more readily available. The problem is, plants grown from seed are all different from each other with highly variable yield and nut quality. As a result, the average yields of seedling-type plantings in the Midwest, so far, have not been high enough to support commercial production. But, the resilience from the genetic diversity of a seedling-type planting is highly desirable and with generations of selection and evaluation it is theoretically possible to have seed lines with average yields, disease resistance, and nut quality sufficient to support commercial production. It is an admirable goal and we support it.
As a grower, it is important to know the lingo:
Full-sibling progeny families (full-sibs) - Full-sibling progeny come from a controlled cross between two known parents. The quality and uniformity of the progeny will depend on the quality and uniformity of the parents. The more diverse the parents, the more diverse the progeny.
Half-sibling progeny families (half-sibs) - Saving seed from the best plant in a planting is the most common way to produce seedling-type hazelnuts, but because every seedling in the progeny family potentially has a different pollen parent there is typically more variability among the half-sib progeny than with full-sibs. Likewise, any poor quality traits from the pollen parents may be passed on to the half-sib progeny.
Open pollinated (OP) seedlings - One strategy to produce seedlings (and by far the easiest) is to save seed from many different plants and mix them all together such that the parents of any given seedling are unknown. This is a good way to maximize diversity in a seedling-type planting (good for Eco-Warriors), but also a very slow method to make genetic gains.
Seedling-type growers often want the "best" seedlings possible. Though it is impossible to know for certain how any given seedling will perform, there is information that can help us make predictions:
To that end, Midwest Hazelnuts, LLC partners with breeders and nurseries to offer the best seedling genetics possible.
Hazelnuts are relatively easy to grow from seed but very difficult to vegetatively propagate, which is one reason seedling-type hazelnuts are more readily available. The problem is, plants grown from seed are all different from each other with highly variable yield and nut quality. As a result, the average yields of seedling-type plantings in the Midwest, so far, have not been high enough to support commercial production. But, the resilience from the genetic diversity of a seedling-type planting is highly desirable and with generations of selection and evaluation it is theoretically possible to have seed lines with average yields, disease resistance, and nut quality sufficient to support commercial production. It is an admirable goal and we support it.
As a grower, it is important to know the lingo:
Full-sibling progeny families (full-sibs) - Full-sibling progeny come from a controlled cross between two known parents. The quality and uniformity of the progeny will depend on the quality and uniformity of the parents. The more diverse the parents, the more diverse the progeny.
Half-sibling progeny families (half-sibs) - Saving seed from the best plant in a planting is the most common way to produce seedling-type hazelnuts, but because every seedling in the progeny family potentially has a different pollen parent there is typically more variability among the half-sib progeny than with full-sibs. Likewise, any poor quality traits from the pollen parents may be passed on to the half-sib progeny.
Open pollinated (OP) seedlings - One strategy to produce seedlings (and by far the easiest) is to save seed from many different plants and mix them all together such that the parents of any given seedling are unknown. This is a good way to maximize diversity in a seedling-type planting (good for Eco-Warriors), but also a very slow method to make genetic gains.
Seedling-type growers often want the "best" seedlings possible. Though it is impossible to know for certain how any given seedling will perform, there is information that can help us make predictions:
- Has the progeny family (especially full-sibs) been grown before and is there data on its performance?
- What is known about the parents? Have they been grown in replicate at multiple locations?
- Were parents chosen based solely on phenotypes or were genomic prediction models used?
To that end, Midwest Hazelnuts, LLC partners with breeders and nurseries to offer the best seedling genetics possible.
Continuing the Legacy of Hazelnuts in the Upper Midwest |
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Early leaders of the hazelnut industry in the Midwest, Phil Rutter and Mark Shepard, set the vision of highly-diverse plantings consisting of seed-origin plants. Realizing this vision will take generations and you can play a part. You'll have more variable production than from cultivars and average yields of seed-origin plantings have not yet proven commercially viable, but by planting seedling-type hazelnuts you can carry on the legacy by helping develop seed lines and finding the next great cultivars.
Check out our Grower Guide to learn more about the different types of seedlings and the pros and cons of growing seedlings vs cultivars.