Mon February 18, 2013 Growing Resistance, Oregon Hazelnuts
Battle Blight Originally published on Mon February 18, 2013 5:42
am Growers estimate that 99 percent of the United States' crop
comes from Oregon's Willamette Valley. Just a few years ago, the
industry was on the verge of collapse due to a disease called
Eastern filbert blight. Now, years of research have brought
blight-resistant breeds to fruition. The disease first hit the
region in the late 1980s. Infected trees develop cankers, which
gradually kill off the branches. "It's just like cancer for
trees, there's no real answer to it yet," says Tanner Koenig, a
young farmer who grew up fighting blight. "It's just some of
them have a 20-year lifespan left, some of them, it's five. Some
orchards, we're taking trees out already." Farmers initially
struggled with handling the disease. They tried to cut off trees
at the base (that actually led to new growth, which was more
susceptible to the disease). They also sprayed the trees in the
fall with copper-based