Blueberries

Blueberries are native to North America, and before the early 20th century existed purely as a wild-foraged fruit — nobody had successfully cultivated them, largely because growers didn't understand their unusual need for acidic soil.

USDA botanist Frederick Coville published the first scientific blueberry-growing instructions in 1910, then partnered with New Jersey cranberry farmer Elizabeth White, who helped fund and organize the search for superior wild plants. Coville achieved the first successful crosses between wild highbush and lowbush blueberries in 1911, effectively inventing the modern blueberry industry within a single decade. That original USDA-New Jersey partnership is still the direct ancestor of the most widely planted blueberry today: Bluecrop, released in 1952, remains the industry's mid-season benchmark more than seventy years later.

"Blueberry" actually covers two genuinely distinct groups. Northern highbush varieties (Bluecrop, Duke, Legacy, Patriot) are bred for colder climates and dominate commercial production in the northern US. Rabbiteye varieties are a separate species bred specifically to handle the heat and humidity of the American South.

Tifblue was released jointly by the University of Georgia and USDA-ARS in 1955, following a dedicated breeding program begun in 1950 by Dr. Tom Brightwell specifically to produce a well-flavored rabbiteye blueberry able to tolerate the hot, unpredictable Southern climate. It became the rabbiteye industry standard and remains the benchmark against which newer Southern varieties are still compared today.

Biloxi was released by the USDA in Mississippi in 1998, bred with an exceptionally low chill requirement (150–200 hours) specifically to open up commercial blueberry growing in the Deep South and other very mild-winter regions where most other varieties fail to leaf out properly.

Real, well-documented case of an incorrect attribution circulating in grower literature: at least one source wrongly credits Patriot's development directly to Frederick Coville, despite Coville having died in 1937, decades before Patriot's 1970s release — worth treating with skepticism if you see it repeated elsewhere.