Welcome back to the Port-Prolls Almanac. This is Andy, and today we're talking with Dr. Thomas Malnar from the renowned hazelnut breeding

program at Rutgers University. Founded in 1996, the Rutgers Breeding Program is responsible

for many of the recent cultivars that have found their way into the public, including Monmouth

and Somerset. We chat about the work they're doing what the future holds for the humble hazelnut,

and we chat a bit about the Dogwood project he also oversees. For more information, as always,

check out the links in the show notes, and if you're interested in learning more about hazelnuts,

check out the episode we released just last week. And now, let's get on to the interview.

Thank you. released just last week. And now, let's get on to the interview. Tom, thanks so much for coming on. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up

working with hazelnuts. Oh, well, first of all, I appreciate the interest in the time today.

Actually, Hazelnuts goes back to 1996. I was one of those

lucky people who kind of fell in the right place at the right time with the right interests.

When I was a freshman at Rutgers, I met a professor. I knew I wanted to get into plant

breeding, and I met a professor who had already had a full career and breeding turf grasses for like sports turfs and improved lawns and he was nearing

retirement and he got inspired or followed an earlier passion to start a new project on breeding

temperate nut trees. So it wasn't just hazelnuts, it was hazelnuts and different species of

walnuts, almonds, even ginkos, we had pistachios, basically everything that Jay Russell Smith

talked about in his tree crops book. And I met Dr. Funk when I was a freshman and I was just

really blown away by the ideas of tree crops as a part of a sustainable agriculture.

And he was starting the project in 1996, and I started working hourly for him,

and basically worked alongside a really well-practiced and successful plant breeder,

but to build a new program on a different crop species, you know, grasses versus trees,

and allowed me to learn next to a master and was fortunate enough to carry that into graduate

...