Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) is a traditional nut crop in southern Europe. Germplasm exploration conducted on-farm in five countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and Greece) identified 77 landraces. The present work describes phenotypic variation in nut and husk traits and investigates genetic relationships using 10 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers among these landraces, 57 well-known references cultivars, and 19 wild accessions. Among the 77 landraces, 42 had unique fingerprints while 35 showed a SSR profile identical to a known cultivar. Among the 42 unique landraces, morphological observations revealed high phenotypic diversity and some had characteristics appreciated by the market such as nut round and calibre Analysis of genetic relationships and population structure allowed investigation of the origin and spread of the cultivated germplasm in southern Europe. Our results indicate the existence of three primary centres of diversity in the Mediterranean basin: northwestern Spain (Tarragona) and southern Italy (Campania) in the West and Black Sea (Turkey) in the East. Moreover, the data suggests the existence of secondary gene pools in the Iberian (Asturias) and Italian (Liguria and Latium) Peninsulas, where local varieties were recently domesticated from wild forms and/or from introduced ancient domesticated varieties.

HazLand_DatabaseLocations of 77 landraces characterized in five southern European countries; Morphological and technological parameters of 42 landraces with unique SSR profiles and standard cultivars 'Tonda Gentile delle Langhe' and 'Negret'; Alleles sizes (in base pairs, bps) at 10 SSR loci in 42 landraces (LR) surveyed on-farm and 57 reference cultivars (CV) collected from different European germplasm repositories.