C-DRONE GUIDE · 10 SEPTEMBER 2026

Hazelnuts and drones: mapping young orchards and canopy vigour, price

France had 11,400 hectares of hazelnut orchards in 2024 (Agreste), and the sector has no intention of stopping there: Unicoque, the cooperative based in Cancon (Lot-et-Garonne), has set out an ambition — since its supply partnership signed with Ferrero in 2021 — to grow its 6,000 hectares of orchards, 2,500 of them young plantations, up to 10,000 hectares. Yet the 2024 harvest was a reminder of how fragile the crop still is: national production fell to 8,400 tonnes, down from 17,200 tonnes in 2023, hit by the historic nut weevil and by the brown marmorated stink bug, an invasive species still spreading. Here is what a drone brings to a young orchard being established, and to vigour monitoring on a producing orchard — and what it does not detect directly.

Published on 10 September 2026, reviewed on 11 September 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.

A sector expanding by design, held back by a 2024 harvest under pressure

After decades of stagnation, French hazelnut growing is now expanding by design. Ferrero, which alone accounts for close to 30% of world hazelnut demand, wants French-grown hazelnuts to make up 50 to 60% of what it processes in France: that is the point of the supply partnership signed in 2021 with Unicoque, the cooperative based in Cancon (Lot-et-Garonne) that brings together the bulk of national production across five sites. Of its 6,000 hectares of current orchards, 2,500 hectares are already young plantations being established, with a stated development outlook of up to 10,000 hectares for the cooperative alone.

This planting drive contrasts with a 2024 harvest marked by a health crisis well documented by the trade: Agreste puts national production at 8,400 tonnes, down from 17,200 tonnes in 2023 — a drop of nearly half. The industry body (ANPN) sets the season's potential at 13,000 tonnes, of which only around 6,500 tonnes were actually harvested because of the nut weevil (Curculio nucum), the crop's long-standing pest; close to 2,000 tonnes more — roughly 30% of the harvested volume — were then rendered unfit for sale by the brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys), an Asian invasive species detected in France since 2012 and still spreading — the ANPN and INRAE Sophia-Antipolis have been working since 2019 on egg parasitoid wasps of the genus Trissolcus as a biocontrol avenue.

What two studies document on drone-based hazelnut monitoring

Monitoring hazelnut trees (Corylus avellana) by drone remains a fairly recent field of research, but two Italian studies, carried out on intensive orchards in Piedmont, look directly at this crop. The first, by Vinci, Brigante, Traini and Farinelli, published in 2023 in Remote Sensing, develops a method for measuring an intensive orchard's geometric parameters by drone — canopy radius and height, total tree height, trunk height — without the slow, imprecise manual ground surveys normally required to steer a young orchard through its formation years (see the study on Google Scholar).

The second, by Morisio, Noris, Pagliarani, Pavone, Moine, Doumet and Ardito, published in 2025 in Sensors, built a dataset of 4,112 RGB, red-edge and near-infrared images across 185 trees in two Piedmont orchards, to train models predicting plant health status from vegetation indices (see the study on Google Scholar). The authors show that a drone-computed vegetation index distinguishes weakened trees from healthy ones before the gap is obvious to the eye from the access row — without, however, identifying the precise cause of that weakening.

What a drone flight brings to a grower or a cooperative

Two uses follow from this research for a French grower or cooperative. The first concerns young orchards being established, such as the 2,500 hectares Unicoque has planted in recent years: a geometric drone survey, following Vinci and colleagues' method, objectively measures how evenly the trees have taken after planting — canopy height and volume compared tree by tree — and quickly flags rows that need replanting or trees lagging in growth, rather than waiting for an exhaustive visual check across plots spanning several hectares.

The second use is vigour monitoring during production, through an NDVI-type vegetation index repeated across the season: it flags a stressed zone before it is visible from the ground, whether from water deficit, uneven fertilisation, or early weakening linked to pest pressure.

One thing not to expect from a drone: neither the nut weevil nor the brown marmorated stink bug is detected directly by aerial imagery. The weevil lays eggs in the developing nut and its larvae leave the shell to pupate in the soil; the stink bug pierces the shell and kernel, damage that only shows up once the nut is cracked open at sorting. A vigour flight gives a general alert on the tree's condition — useful for targeting ground observation or trapping — never a pest diagnosis.

Where to fly in Lot-et-Garonne and south-west France

France's hazelnut belt is concentrated in the south-west — Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Landes, Gers — around Unicoque's historic site in Cancon, with older acreage in Rhône-Alpes and the south-east. The terrain there is generally flat to gently rolling, with no particular airspace constraint: most agricultural mapping flights fall under the open category, subcategory A3, well clear of built-up areas. The point worth checking before any flight is the presence of a local aerodrome (Agen-La Garenne, Bergerac-Dordogne-Périgord) or a temporary restricted zone, via the Géoportail drone zone map cross-checked against the French AIP; if a plot falls under a control zone, coordination follows the process set out in our guide to missions inside an aerodrome control zone.

The same principle of geometric mapping and vigour monitoring, adapted to other orchards, applies to almond orchards, a comparably expanding young orchard crop, and to walnut orchards, another south-western nut crop facing its own water constraints; our page on precision agriculture by drone covers the multispectral method across all types of vegetation cover.

Prices observed in 2026

A young hazelnut orchard is priced mostly on a multi-year monitoring campaign, to accompany the trees' formation over several years before they enter production. Ranges observed in France in 2026, excl. VAT:

These amounts cover the flight and delivery of a usable map within 24 to 48 hours; they do not include pest trapping or the agronomic decision on how to manage the orchard, which remain the grower's or the cooperative technician's call. For a growers' group in Lot-et-Garonne bringing together several neighbouring orchards, a grouped campaign meaningfully cuts the cost per hectare. Request a quote stating the area, the orchard's age and the intended period: at planting and then each spring for structural monitoring, during the season for vigour.

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