New Zealand: will seek to develop a new type of juicy cranberry and sweet taste
Variety that is not commercially viable will be taken to produce a hybrid with characteristics that improve the traditional fruit.
A new type of berry is seen in the future? Apparently yes and this would be a hybrid between a typical bilberry and a bilberry, blueberry that is characterized by having its reddish-blue flesh.
This is what New Zealand science company Plant & Food Research hopes to achieve by financially supporting the MBE Endeavor Fund to investigate the potential of a new cash crop that combines blueberries with blueberries bilberries.
Bilberries are small berries that are found in northern Europe and among its characteristics is its dark blue coloration, which concentrates a high amount of anthocyanins. These compounds give the fruit its distinctive blue skin and are very beneficial for health.
However, bilberries are not viable as a cash crop, because they are difficult to grow and are highly susceptible to damage when harvested or transported.
The new research program will reproduce new cranberry-bilberry hybrids adapted to New Zealand conditions.
It is expected that they will be cultivated and handled in a similar way to traditional blueberries, but that they produce fruit with a sweet, juicy flavor, with a good color in their flesh and a high concentration of anthocyanins, characteristic of bilberries.
"Research suggests that consumers want fruits with new characteristics, such as color, and with additional health benefits"Says the program leader, Dr. Richard Espley.
"Cranberries have high concentrations of anthocyanins in their skin, which gives them their dark blue appearance. The breeding of a hybrid with bilberries, a cousin of blueberries with a natural red-blue flesh, should allow us to develop a new crop that is colored throughout the fruit".
"A new type of tasty and full color berry would provide New Zealand with a unique product on the market".
As part of the research project, which has been awarded with NZ $ 5 million (US $ 3,6 million) for the next five years, scientists will also investigate the genetic pathways that control the color of meat in fruits.
This will allow the breeders to develop better crops more quickly, by examining the seedlings in the hybrid breeding program at an early stage in order to select the plants that will produce the fruit with the colored meat and which will be evaluated in the future.
It is anticipated that this knowledge could also be used to inform improvement programs of other high-colored flesh fruits.
New Zealand produces about 4.000 metric tons of blueberries each year with a value of NZ $ 55 million (US $ 40 million). This figure includes exports that reach NZ $ 37 million (US $ 26.9 million) and are mainly directed to Australia.
Source: Fruit Portal
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