Oregon hazelnut growers harvested more than 100,000 tons for the first time this past year, a milestone many years in the making and one that 35 years ago may not have seemed plausible.

It was the early 1990s, the fungal disease Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB) was raging, prices were modest at best, and acres were holding steady at about 28,000.

“People really weren’t planting,” said Oregon State University plant pathologist Jay Pscheidt. “They were hoping and sort of waiting for the (OSU) breeding program to come up with (an EFB) resistant cultivar.”

“It was really tough in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s,” said Larry George, owner and CEO of Northwest Hazelnut Co. and George Packing Co.

China’s entry into the in-shell hazelnut market helped boost the industry in the mid- to late-1990s, George said. Still, the high costs of keeping trees healthy in the face of heavy EFB pressure dissuaded growers from planting more hazelnuts.

What happened next changed the industry, and in rapid fashion.

“We had what I would say was the perfect storm,” said Sean Denfeld of Denfeld Packing and Laurel Foods in Hillsboro, Ore. “We had a number of years of good pricing for our in-shell into Asia. We had a housing downturn, which led to softer grass seed and nursery stock prices. And then you had the release of an Eastern Filbert Blight-resistant cultivar. These were the ingredients for growth in the (Willamette) Valley.”

In a nine-year span, between 2010 and 2018, according to Pacific Agricultural Survey, which tracks hazelnut acreage, Oregon growers planted nearly 50,000 acres of hazelnuts. Today, according to the latest figures, Oregon is home to 96,856 acres of hazelnuts, and most expect that number will exceed 100,000 in the near future, if it hasn’t already.

Further, according to a press release from the Hazelnut Marketing Board, as the thousands of acres that were planted in the last several years reach full maturity, production is expected to continue to rise.

“We’ve got a nice array of good varieties over many different growing areas, and then we’ve got great growers just doing a really good job in terms of nutrition and water management and just trying to minimize stressors on the trees,” Denfeld said. “It’s created a really nice smooth trajectory of growth.”

“Oregon is proving itself to the world market as a reliable source of hazelnuts, and I would say that Oregon is enjoying the fruits of that reputation.” – Sean Denfeld

New Growers
Michael Severeid, CEO of Willamette Hazelnut, added that the infusion of growers from other industries into hazelnuts has helped advance production practices.

“We have legacy hazelnut farms that understand our crop, and very importantly, we have a lot of other professional farmers that have come from other crops and brought their experience with them,” Severeid said. “And I think that this expansion of people from the grass seed and vegetable industries has really enhanced the overall practice of farming hazelnuts by incorporating and sharing their other farming techniques with the hazelnut community.”

The combination of more acres, sophisticated growing practices and improved varieties pushed the industry to its record production of over 120,000 tons this past year, a huge increase from the previous record of 96,000 tons harvested in 2024. And, buoyed by increased demand driven in part by investments in research and promotions, prices have not only held steady in the face of this production increase, but have risen.

The grower-funded Hazelnut Marketing Board promotes Oregon hazelnuts in trade shows around the world and works to facilitate new and expanded uses of hazelnuts through the development of variety profiles that help end users understand the flavor and chemical makeup of different varieties.

“It is basic data that we need to be able to give research and development teams to create new products,” Severeid said.

Investment in research and development on a processor level has helped increase the hazelnut’s infusion into granola bars, trail mixes, drinks and confectionery products.

Processors have added capacity and invested in new technology to help bring quality product to market in a timely manner, a combination that can be critical.

“If you miss a customer’s receiving date, it might not come back. The sales might be gone for good,” Severeid said. “So, it’s important to be able to shell and ship quickly.”

And by bringing large volumes of high-quality product into the marketplace when other major production areas suffer crop damage, processors have made inroads into previously shuttered markets.

“We have opened up a lot of accounts in the last four years that previously had just been Turkish or Italian only,” Severeid said. “So, we have gained market share around the world.”

“We now have reliable volume,” Denfeld said. “We don’t have these wild whipsaws highs and lows. And so, with that stability, combined with quality, traceability, sustainability and reliability, Oregon is proving itself to the world market as a reliable source of hazelnuts, and I would say that Oregon is enjoying the fruits of that reputation.”

Improved Varieties
At the root of the industry’s success are cultivars developed by the OSU breeding program, including many that conferred resistance to the race of EFB that inhibited industry growth in its early days.

Between when Shawn Mehlenbacher took the lead of the program in the mid-1980s until he retired in 2024, the program released more than two dozen cultivars, including notably in 2005, Santiam, the first with resistance to the old race of EFB, and Yamhill and Jefferson, the second and third cultivars with EFB resistance, which were released in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

That is when the industry took off, said Pscheidt, who joined OSU in 1988.

“They could finally plant something that they didn’t have to worry about Eastern Filbert Blight too much and understand that the industry had the foresight to say, ‘This is a big problem,” he said. “We are going to tax ourselves. We are going to invest heavily in research. We are going to have a team of OSU scientists work on this problem and not just control Eastern Filbert Blight, but come up with new and improved cultivars.”

As the breeding program drew closer to releasing an EFB-resistant variety, Pscheidt said growers took the unusual step of planting numbered varieties so they could have nursery stock available if and when a variety was ready for release.

“They were like, ‘Well, we can’t just sit around and wait, because as soon as Shawn releases it, then everyone is going to want it and then nurseries are going to run out of it,’” Pscheidt said.

“We have opened up a lot of accounts in the last four years that previously had just been Turkish or Italian only.”
– Michael Severeid

Growers called the effort the “Go-Fast Program,” Pscheidt said. “They called it that because they wanted to go fast when the cultivars were released. They wanted to make sure that they had enough planting material.”

Today, OSU is working on developing cultivars with resistance to the new strain of EFB, called Race 1, that has overcome the resistance conferred by the Gasaway gene. The breeding program released its first cultivar with resistance to the Race 1 strain earlier this year. The cultivar, Lagerstedt, gets its resistance from a gene in the Spanish cultivar Ratoli.

Looking ahead, the industry has several positives going for it. Oregon has positioned itself in the international marketplace as a go-to supplier of quality hazelnuts. The industry is experiencing increased sales in the domestic marketplace, and it continues to press for more domestic consumption. OSU continues to develop new and improved varieties. And Oregon growers, by all accounts, are continuing to plant hazelnut trees.

“I think what you are seeing today is a little bit of a renaissance in interest in planting,” Denfeld said. “You’re not going to have the 15,000-acre planted years, necessarily, as we had in the past, and it’s likely we are not going to see as many new entrants into the grower community as there were in the 2010s. However, I think growers that have been involved in hazelnuts are certainly expanding where it makes sense to.”