Page 25 - MNLGA Free State Winter 2023_WEB

North America. This pathogen
has caused extensive dieback of
European type hazelnuts in the Pacific
northwest of the U.S. where European
hazelnut (filbert) production is an
important agricultural industry. This
disease has prevented nursery owners
from successfully growing European
hazelnuts on the east coast. When
the European hazelnut (C. avellana)
was introduced to North America
and cultivation was attempted in the
early part of the 20th century, eastern
filbert blight was identified and found
to be so destructive that cultivation of
European filbert was abandoned.
Tom Molnar has made his cultivars
available through Foggy Bottom Hybrid hazelnut upclose at CMREC field trial
Nursery in New Jersey. Early in the
New liquid screen dissecting scopes for new CMREC Lab
summer Andrew, David, and I traveled
to Foggy Bottom to purchase these
5 new cultivar releases. We will be
evaluating these cultivars, and how
they perform in Maryland, over the
next three years.

Grimo Nut Nursery, of Canada,
has also developed a filbert blight-
resistant cultivar of hazelnut and we
have some of those bare root plants
arriving in the spring of 2024 to add
to our test plots at CMREC and the
WYEREC research centers.

Taking it a step further, David
Clement and I inoculated these hybrid
hazelnuts with a native truffle fungus,
called Appalachian white truffle,
Tuber canaliculatum. If this works, we
will have a hybrid European hazelnut
that can also produce native truffles. Stanton Gill, Extension Specialist in IPM for Greenhouses

We plan to hold a field day in 2025 and Nurseries, University of Maryland Extension
when Maryland nursery managers and Professor, Montgomery College, Germantown Campus,
can visit the field trial site. A Landscape Technology Program
Sgill@umd.edu
410-868-9400

Membership Matters • WINTER 2023 25