UGA Blueberry Breeding Program

The blueberry breeding program of the University of Georgia was established in 1944 at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station in Tifton, Georgia, currently known as the University of Georgia Tifton Campus. Establishing the public breeding program was in response to the failed commercialization venture in Florida, which was undermined by the poor and variable fruit quality from wild plant stock in early 1900’s.

As a pioneer in the field, Dr. W. T. Brightwell (1944-1974) initiated the modern breeding program for rabbiteye blueberries (Vaccinium virgatum), a hexaploid species native to the southeastern U.S. that includes South Georgia, north Florida, and southeast Alabama. The germplasm resources for rabbiteye breeding were wild selections such as  ‘Ruby’, ‘Black Giant’, ‘Hagood’, ‘Suwannee’, ‘Clara’, ‘Myers’, ‘Ethel’, and ‘Walker’. These germplasms were collected and transplanted to UGA Tifton campus between 1930 to 1940.

Dr. Brightwell established a 50-acre blueberry research farm at a flatwood area in Alapaha, Georgia,in 1945, twenty-five miles east of UGA Tifton campus, which still supports active breeding project as of today. Between 1940 and 1960, Georgia blueberry industry had been slowly emerging and reached one hundred acres scattered across the state by the end of 1960’s. Dr. Brightwell persisted in this breeding position and diligently engaged in cooperative breeding projects between USDA and the University of Georgia. He released rabbiteye cultivars with significant improvement over the wild selections. In 1970, as southeastern farmers sought alternative crops to replace tobacco, Dr. Brightwell supplied 15,000 cuttings to growers and boosted the Georgia blueberry industry. One of his most impactful rabbiteye cultivars ‘Tifblue’ was planted in 1,500 acres by the 1990’s accounting for half of blueberry acreage in the state at that time. 

Dr. Ye Chu succeeded in the blueberry breeder position in 2022. She carries on developing both southern highbush and rabbiteye blueberries by address the most pressing production constraints faced by Georgia growers. These constraints include narrow harvest window, lack of resistance to diseases and heat stress, and inadaptability to mechanical harvestability.

To address these critical needs, her program actively makes new crosses, expands the genetic pool, evaluates fruit and bush qualities, makes new selections, and advances top selections in growers’ field trials. Her program is working with collaborators to identify the genetic controls in blueberries that are critical to mitigate the economic loss to early freeze, heat stress, and phytophthora root rot disease. By leveraging the advance in blueberry genomic and genetic resources, UGA blueberry breeding program will stay strong and provide more new cultivars to support the sustainability of blueberry industry.