OZSTAR has the best roasters of various capacities to give you the perfectly roasted peanuts! We also provide additional equipment for flavouring and seasoning the nuts. OZSTAR also provides additional flavoring and seasoning equipment for nuts We manufacture different capacity to suit demand. This stainless steel is of high quality and can be controlled from the touch screen control panel.
This bacterial disease is at its most debilitating in young trees, as succulent tissue can be badly affected by lesions which girdle the shoot. In older trees, leaves show light-green lesions which darken with age. Lesions can also appear on the nuts and husks as dark-brown spots, although this is normally superficial. Trees are generally more prone in wet seasons as the disease requires moisture for its development. Control should be based on using clean planting material, reducing the risk of transmission by pruning, and using registered copper-based sprays in late summer to autumn and in early spring. In NSW hazelnuts start to fall in late February to early March; most have fallen by the end of March. Nuts are generally harvested with hand rakes, but if nuts can be windrowed with sweepers then suction equipment or self-propelled pick-up machines can improve the efficiency of the harvest. A mechanised harvester depends on the area under the trees being free from weeds, reasonably level, and firm.
Currently in NSW no large mechanised harvesters are used for hazelnuts, and harvesting largely includes the use of smaller ‘finger wheel’ harvester units. The removal of blank nuts or nuts with shrivelled kernels is essential to keep quality high but identification of blank nuts is difficult. With small quantities, nuts can be placed in water and the blanks floated off. With some varieties, blanks will fall a week ahead of the remaining crop. Hazelnuts should be collected promptly after falling as rain can cause discolouration of the shell. Nuts left on damp ground for over a week will gradually darken, become less attractive and be prone to fungal attack. Following collection, the nuts should be cleaned and dried to approximately 8%–10% moisture. In the case of some confectionery companies, 6% moisture is the maximum required.
Temperatures of 32°C–38°C are commonly used for drying, and equipment for other purposes, such as prune driers or small dehydrators, can be adapted to dry the nuts. The amount of heat required is relatively small and the speed of drying is not critical. Hazelnuts begin to bear at approximately three years old and at six years yields should approach 2 to 2.5 kg/tree. At the lower limit this translates to 1000 kg/ha, assuming 500 trees/ha. Yields of 2.5 to 3.5 t/ha sustained annually would be considered an acceptable level of production. Yields of 4.5 kg of in-shell product and greater have been recorded from 8 y.o. trees at the Orange Agricultural Institute.
