April 14, 2017
CapitalPress.com
9
Fighting the blight continues as growers expand
By JAN JACKSON
For the Capital Press
ALBANY, Ore. — David
Chambers, a third-generation
hazelnut grower who lives
just down the road from the
Century farm on which he
grew up, cut his orchard acre-
age to 85 acres three years
ago.
Harder to get rid of, how-
ever, is the eastern filbert
blight plaguing his remaining
trees. Semi-retired after sell-
ing the Century farm to his
nephew, Brian Graffenberger,
Chambers and his son Eric are
spending long days pushing
over and burning blight-dis-
eased trees and planting new
blight-resistant varieties.
EFB, which is caused by
a fungus indigenous to the
Northeastern U.S., causes
only a canker on the native
American hazelnut but is le-
thal when it appears on the
represents about 2,700 trees,”
Chambers said. “In the mean-
time, I’m replacing them with
the Jefferson variety, which
was developed and evaluated
at Oregon State University in
Corvallis. It is supposed to be
comparable to the industry
standard nut produced by the
Barcelona in nut and kernel
size. More importantly, it is
supposed to be highly resis-
tance to eastern filbert blight.”
Looking at other issues in-
volving the future of hazelnut
production, Chambers thinks
Oregon’s growing region is
Jan Jackson/For the Capital Press on ground that will be OK
during the erratic weather ex-
David Chambers, a third-generation hazelnut grower near Albany,
Ore., has been replacing the European varieties of hazelnut trees in pected with climate change.
He has seen the brown mar-
his orchard with new blight-resistant varieties.
morated stink bugs that are
commercially important Eu- Chambers chose to grow. beginning to plague the in-
Now, recognized as one of the dustry on his property, but has
ropean hazelnut varieties.
EFB was discovered in varieties most susceptible to yet to find any damage from
them in the orchard. Cham-
the West in 1973. The vigor- EFB, he is replacing them.
“We’re pushing over and bers also sees a continuing
ous-growing jumbo-nut vari-
ety Ennis was one of the types burning about 20 acres, which marketing challenge in trying
to take hazelnuts to the next
level.
“We keep trying to figure
out ways to increase prod-
uct sales but there certainly
doesn’t seem to be a simple
solution,” Chambers said.
“Even though Oregon grows
99 percent of the nation’s ha-
zelnuts, it is still only 5 per-
cent of the world’s. It only
takes a bad year on our part
and we have to rely on Turkey
to make up the difference.”
Oregon’s growers continue
to pursue market options.
Custom
Filbert Harvest
Available 2017
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