Preliminary results of Turkish hazelnut (Corylus colurna L.) populations for testing the nut characteristics

This paper aims to identify the hazelnut characteristics of four different populations (A?l?-Tunuslar, A?l?-M?sellimler, Ara?-G?zl?k and Tosya-K???ksekiler) in the North Western Black Sea Region of Turkey, one of the most important areas of economic interest for this species. There, the Turkish hazel (Corylus colurna L.) grows in its optimal conditions and reveals relatively high inter-population and intra-population variation in terms of nut characteristics. With the purpose of assessing variation, measurements were performed in four populations in Kastamonu district on 14 different nut characteristics (number of nuts per cluster, nut length (mm), nut width (mm), nut thickness (mm), shell thickness (mm), nut size (mm), nut shape, compression index, nut weight (g), kernel length (mm), kernel width (mm), kernel thickness (mm), kernel weight (g) and kernel ratio (%) of representative samples of the populations. Significant differences were found out among populations with regard to all of nut characteristics (p