Julie Dawson, associate professor in the Department of Horticulture, received $649,604 for her project “Breeding for improved kernel quality characteristics in American hazelnut” through NIFA’s Plant Breeding for Agricultural Production program within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. It was among 32 projects sharing $16.2 million in funding.

Project summary (from CRIS website): Hazelnuts represent a high value crop for growers and a crop with significant environmental benefits and present a unique opportunity for the Upper Midwest. American hazelnut, Corylus americana, is native to Eastern North America. It has strong tolerance to Eastern Filbert Blight, a devastating disease for European hazelnuts, C. avellana, the majority of US and global production. It is also cold hardy in the Upper Midwest. For these reasons it is both a well-adapted crop for our growers and a potential source of important traits for breeders of European hazelnut. The main drawback is its small nut size, meaning that it is primarily used for processing markets. To capture high value processing markets, cultivars with improved protein and oil composition and increased shelf life are needed. We propose to develop high throughput phenotyping methods and genomic prediction models for these traits. We will phenotype a population of American hazelnut and three interspecific crosses of American and European hazelnut for nutritional quality characteristics. We will then use hyperspectral NIR imaging to develop prediction models to reduce the cost of acquiring this data in a breeding program. We will conduct genetic mapping for the nutritional quality traits using genome wide association analysis in the representative population of American hazelnut and F1 linkage mapping in the interspecific crosses. Finally, we will test genomic prediction models for kernel quality traits to develop tools for parental and progeny selection, which will greatly aid in selecting for these traits in a long lived perennial crop.