Three Years of Observations on Hazelnut Yielding and Fruit Quality under Organic and Conventional Management

Despite to the yielding loss, hazelnut organic management, in Italy, is still applied by some hazelnut growers. Due to the importance and to the delicacy of the problem, our investigation project provided 10 years of observation. Here the last 3 years of data are reported. This investigation showed that the main negative aspect of organic management is the high rate of nuts affected by bud bugs. Therefore another problem is due to the very important productivity loss. To validate or not the conclusions of previous works, the comparison between organic and conventional management was carried out in three typical hazelnut areas named "Alta Langa", "Langa" and "Monregalese", in which 1 conventional and 1 organic orchard management have been chosen to record productivity and nut quality traits. In the years 2009-2011, both total and average (t/ha) production were recorded for each hazelnut orchard, and 3 kg samples of nuts were taken from whole nut yielding. Each sample was analysed through the standard marketing surveys. In particular fruit and kernel weight, fruit empty and bud bug kernel damage percentage, has been considered. The results were statistically analyzed through conventional-organic comparisons, and tested with the "t" test. These last 3 years of observation, confirm, without any doubt, the results of the previous observations. That means the hazelnut organic production cannot be suitable especially for the production loss and for a worse nut quality, due to the bud bug kernel damages.