[Modified3019]

It’s definitely curious, but makes more sense when you realized that problems that spread from “the west” to Asia have no reason to be brought up, or even talked about in our languages.

“Eastern Filbert Blight” is a fungal disease native to North America, and our native hazelnuts are able to tolerate it. European hazelnuts are typically used in agriculture (for multiple good reasons) however these are basically wiped out by EFB without constant copper sprays, as they never evolved with the arms race against this pathogen. While I hear about it a lot here in Oregon, where we have a lot of European hazelnut variety orchards, I never hear much about what it’s doing in say England, or Turkey.

Incidentally, while an EFB resistant series of hazelnut cultivars was developed in response by Oregon State University, containing the Gasaway gene, there is now version of EFB that can fully overcome that resistance and is rapidly spreading here in Oregon, though it’s likely on the east coast as well.

OSU is working on new resistant varieties, but nothing will be released until there are multiple modes of resistance (at least 3), otherwise a new EFB strain will just get selected for again.

[nkurz]

Rather than trying to create EFB resistant European varieties (Corylus avellana), another approach is to concentrate on developing naturally-resistant American varieties (Corylus americana) with larger nuts. Since these varieties are also more cold tolerant, the hope is that this will allow a hazelnut industry in the North East. More info here: https://znutty.com/pages/about-hazelnuts (not associated, just following their work).