POSSIBILITY OF LONG TERM BLUEBERRY HARVESTING WITH COMBINED HIGHBUSH AND RABBITEYE BLUEBERRY CULTIVATION IN JAPAN

Rabbiteye and highbush blueberries have been cultured in the experimental orchard at the University of Tsukuba.
Two year-old ownrooted rabbiteye blueberries of the ‘Woodard’, ‘Homebell’ and ‘Tifblue’ varieties were planted in 1977. Meanwhile, the highbush blueberry varieties ‘Weymouth’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘Herbert’ were grafted on two year-old ‘Homebell’ rabbiteye blueberries in 1980. Plants have reached approximately 1.5m in height for highbush and 2m in height for rabbiteye blueberries with vigorous growth.

Maturation and harvesting duration was from June to early July for the highbush blueberry ‘Weymouth’ and mid-June to July for the ‘Jersey’ and ‘Herbert’ varieties.
On the other hand, ‘Woodard’ rabbiteye blueberries were harvested from mid-July to mid-September, ‘Homebell’ from late July to September.

The highbush blueberry yield came to 10–15t/ha and the rabbiteye blueberry yield reached 12–15t/ha 3 to 5 and 7 to 8 years after planting respectively, by using systematic high density planting.

From the results obtained, we concluded that the possibility of continuous long term harvesting was established by combining highbush and rabbiteye blueberry cultivation under the same conditions.

IV International Symposium on Vaccinium Culture

M. Fukushima, H. Gemma, C. Oogaki

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1989.241.39