April 13, 2018
CapitalPress.com
19
Researchers focus on helping hazelnut boom
By BRENNA WIEGAND
For the Capital Press
Lynn Ketchum/OSU
Oregon State Extension Orchard
Crops Specialist Nik Wiman
updates growers on brown mar-
morated stink bug research.
Hazelnuts are the most
important orchard crop in
Oregon’s Willamette Valley,
where nearly the entire U.S.
crop is produced.
It is also known for the in-
novative cultivars developed
at Oregon State University
that are resistant to eastern
filbert blight, a fungal disease
that has decimated traditional
hazelnut cultivars, including
Barcelona and Ennis.
Across the valley farmers
have been putting in an av-
erage of 5,000 acres of new
orchards each winter over the
past five years, with 7,000-
8,000 acres going in last year.
Currently there are nearly
30,000 acres of the older cul-
tivars in the Valley and about
40,000 acres in new trees for
a rough total of 70,000 acres.
However, these new or-
chards are also attracting new
problems, said Nik Wiman,
orchard crops specialist at
OSU’s North Willamette Re-
search and Extension Center
in Aurora, Ore.
Among them is the black
headed borer. Seen since the
dry summer of 2015, it seems
to target new orchards.
“They key in on stress
signals the trees give off and
have been fairly devastating
in some of the new plantings,”
Wiman said. “It is difficult to
observe the borer’s life cycle
because most of it is spent in-
side the tree.”
As growers pruned infested
wood, Wiman and colleagues
gathered the sticks to follow
the borer’s emergence pattern
in the lab. This gave them a
good idea of when they’re fly-
ing in the field.
Attacking
developing
and mature nuts is the diffi-
cult-to-manage brown mar-
morated stink bug, a worldwide
problem first found in Oregon
in 2002. Its first impacts on ha-
zelnuts were identified in 2012.
“Our main strategy has been
with the parasitic Samurai
wasp, a tiny wasp that attacks
BMSB eggs,” Wiman said.
“Although Oregon has 30 na-
tive stink bugs, the BMSB is
an Asian import.”
Samurai wasps attack 80
percent of the BMSB eggs and
keep the pest in check.
“Our original plan was to
petition the government to
allow us to acquire and make
releases of it, then it showed
up here on its own in 2016
and they allowed us to redis-
tribute it.”
Stink bugs reared in the
lab are fed to the wasps to
increase their population.
Wasps are then released in or-
chards in batches of 40.
“Oregon’s native stink
bugs have different wasps spe-
cialized to attack their eggs,”
Wiman said. “However, the
BMSB possesses a defense
that native parasitoids can’t
overcome.”
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