Productive and organoleptic evaluation of new hazelnut crosses

This study presents the results of ten years of observation about the agronomic traits, the nut and kernel characteristics and the sensory analysis of eight crosses of ‘Tonda Gentile Romana’ and ‘Tonda di Giffoni’, selected during a hazelnut breeding program carried out since 1983 in Central Italy. On the basis of the collected data, the most interesting crosses were: • F6P200: for early nut maturity (last ten days of August, at the same time as ‘Tonda Gentile delle Langhe’), steady and high yield, few suckers, spheroidal nut, high pellicle removal (74%) and good flavour of roasted kernel; • F15P5: for high yield, good kernel percentage (48%) and round index (0.91); • F21P12: for good yield and very good kernel percentage (54%); • F4P32: for few suckers, round index (1.02), high kernel uniformity (76%), high pellicle removal (75%) and good flavour of roasted kernel. The crosses F25P29 and F13P9 had a very good kernel percentage (around 51%). The other interesting crosses were F4P32, F25P29 and F13P9 which showed very useful nut characteristics, such as kernel quality and percentage, but their yield needs to be improved through specific cultural techniques or by further breeding.