The Use of Vaccinium elliottii Chapmn. in Breeding Highbush Blueberry

Eighty vigorous V. elliottii seedlings were selected from an 8-km stretch of Perone Creek, in southwest Alabama near Silverhill. Four ramets of each plant were obtained by rooting softwood cuttings taken in August 2013. These were grown in pots of peat in a greenhouse until March 2014. They began to flower in early February, and on March 1 they were placed outside the greenhouse for open pollination. Nineteen tetraploid southern highbush selections, growing in 20-liter pots, which had been chilled in a cooler, were placed in a bee-proof greenhouse in February 2014. Flowers on these plants were emasculated before they opened, and approximately 200 flowers per plant were pollinated with pollen from one or more of the potted V. elliottii selections. From 4301 pollinated flowers, only 78 seeds judged to be germinable were obtained. By contrast, crosses between tetraploid highbush cultvars gave 6720 seeds from 349 pollinated flowers and crosses between two V. elliottii clones gave 8000 seeds from 380 flowers. The 80 V. elliottii clones placed outside for pollination received few or no bee visits during flowering, which continued during March and April, and fruit set was less than 1%. Mean weight of berries from several hundred V. elliottii plants sampled at five forested locations in northwest Florida and southwest Alabama ranged from 184 mg to 341 mg depending on the location. Two berry sample sites in Alabama were along Perone Creek, and were sites from which plants had been propagated for the crossing experiments. Two V. elliottii plants with fastigiate growth habit were found, one at Perone Creek and one along the Suwannee River in Hamilton County, Florida.Paper presented at NABREW Conference, Paper Session I:Blueberry Greeding, on June 24, 2014, Atlantic City, N.J