THE BEHAVIOUR OF SOME HAZELNUT VARIETIES IN THE SOUTH AREA OF TIMIS COUNTY IN TERMS OF EXTERNAL FEATURES OF THE FRUITS

In our country the hazelnut is spread in the hill areas especially in Vâlcea, Gorj, MaramureЮ, Hunedoara counties. In cultures may be found only in some fruit growing resorts like Vâlcea, Fălticeni, Târgu Jiu. The Romanian hazelnut production it is generated mostly from the spontaneous flora where in can be detected valuable biotypes, but also from the newly established cultures with imported varieties. Nevertheless, the Banat area is disposing by a large germplasm on this important tree species, germplasm which deserve to be studied in order to identify some precious genotypes which may be isolated and multiplicated, thus contributing to improvement of Corylus avellana variety, which unfortunately in Romania is rather limited. The present work which is a part of a larger study on local hazelnut germplasm, is following some aspects of external features of the fruits: weight of the fruit, weight of the kernel, % kernel, large diameter of the fruit, small diameter of the fruit, fruit height. The studied biotypes were found in the peoples gardens from Ciacova, Ghilad, Jebel and Pădureni. In terms of the fruit weight were evidenced Jebel and Ciacova biotypes with 1.83 g respectively 1.73 g versus the experiment average with a value of 1.66 g. However, the kernel percentage on the above biotypes was smaller than the experiment average in both cases, on this parameter were distinguished the other two biotypes respectively Ghilad and Pădureni on which the percent kernel has exceeded 50%, a fact to be considered.