Chestnut Rooted Cuttings Workshop held June 20
Print
EmailRegister for the Chestnut Rooted Cuttings Workshop to learn more about the amazing, sweet, edible chestnut and how to use rooted cuttings.
Michigan leads the nation in the number of chestnut growers and acreage planted to chestnut orchards. This national leadership has been achieved by establishing and growing both Chinese chestnut and European X Japanese hybrid chestnut cultivars. The European X Japanese cultivars have many interesting and important traits generally that you might not be aware of. Unique characteristics of some European X Japanese cultivars include large, tasty, commercial nuts, high yields, fast growth, winter hardiness, chestnut blight tolerance and Phytophthora root rot resistance. What is really fascinating is how some of these cultivars can be cloned via rooted cuttings – and many cannot be. Rooted cuttings provide unique avenues for chestnut orchard establishment and expansion.
To find out more about using rooted cuttings and how they were developed, please join the Midwest Nut Producers Council and Michigan State University Extension for the Chestnut Rooted Cuttings Workshop on Saturday, June 20, 2015 at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan. The meeting will feature Beatriz Cuenca Valera, a rooted cuttings expert from Spain. Valera will discuss the Spanish chestnut industry, the rationale behind using rooted cuttings, the characteristics and selection methods used and how to root the cuttings.
In addition, Valera will provide two hands-on workshops in the Plant and Soil Sciences Building on Thursday afternoon, June 18, and Friday morning, June 19. Thursday’s workshop will be devoted to tissue culture techniques and Friday’s workshop will be devoted to rooted cuttings from tissue culture. These sessions are for people with some prior expertise and seating is extremely limited.
Saturday’s meeting will be a review of the Thursday and Friday sessions, but without the hands-on portion and is not as limited on space. Additionally, Saturday will include presentations by Burak Akyuz, graduate student of horticulture professor Umit Serdar of Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey, and professor Andrea Vannini of University of Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy. MSU professor emeritus Dennis Fulbright will host the Saturday session and speak on the chestnut industry as it is evolving in Michigan and the role that rooted cuttings will play.
After the meeting, we will hold a chestnut celebratory dinner at Grand River Marketplace (Grand River Brewery) in Jackson, Michigan, where a chestnut dinner menu and chestnut beer and liqueur will be available (made with locally sourced chestnuts). It is a 40-minute drive, but well worth the time. Please join us!
Dues paying 2015 members of the Midwest Nut Producers Council will receive $50 off this meeting. For more information or to register, visit the Chestnut Rooted Cuttings Workshop Event page or the Events section of the MSU Chestnuts website.
This event is supported in part by the Ernie and Mabel Rogers Research Endowment.
