OSU
Researcher Driving Blueberries up a Tree
Try to imagine blueberries growing on a tree and not a bush. Now
consider that your mind may not be playing tricks on you.
Oregon State University blueberry extension agent Wei Yang, Ph.D.,
who works out of the university’s North Willamette Research
and Extension Center near Aurora, has just begun to experiment with
tree-borne blueberries.
Last year, financed with federal Specialty Crops Research Initiative
grant monies and matching funds from the Oregon Blueberry Commission,
Yang grafted three highbush blueberry varieties – Duke, Bluecrop
and Elliot – onto wild blueberry tree rootstocks that originated
in both eastern Texas and Oklahoma.
Now why would anybody want to do that?
One reason, says Yang, is to eliminate fruit loss during machine
harvest. “With the bush form, during harvest you have lots
of berries falling to the ground. With the tree type, you have fewer
berries falling to the ground because the catch plate from the mechanical
harvester will be able to close very tightly around the trunk.”
It’s somewhat similar to machine harvesting cherries, Yang
said.
He added that blueberry trees have been known to yield up to 30
pounds of fruit per tree, compared to 15 pounds when grown on a
bush.
While overall yields may not increase that much due to the wider
spacing that blueberry trees will need, growing blueberries on trees
could very well offer several advantages over growing berries on
bushes, Yang said.
One would be better drought tolerance. Others include higher resistance
to certain diseases and the elimination of the need for organic
soil amendments, such as sawdust. Yet another feature could be increased
cold tolerance.
Yang, who is in the second year of a five-year project, has been
both budding and whip grafting blueberry scion wood in the greenhouse
onto the tree rootstock. Next year there should be a “large
block” of trees at the research station.
He said that while some people have tinkered with growing blueberries
on grafted rootstock, this is the first time worldwide that a major
study has focused on doing that on a commercial scale.
“The goal of the project is to demonstrate in a commercial
planting if blueberry trees will work. I can give you a blueberry
tree right now and it will grow in your back yard. We want to know
if the trees will grow (the desired cultivars) on a large scale.”
Yang said blueberry trees, which should start bearing fruit about
the same time as bushes, can reach heights of up to 14 feet, “but
you may not want them that large for commercial production.”
He added that while he plans on giving the tree-borne blueberry
project a lot of attention, growers should not get their hopes “too
sky high.”
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