Chandler Blueberry

Chandler was bred by the USDA Agricultural Research Service and released in 1995, developed at the agency's Corvallis, Oregon breeding program. The USDA itself formally described it as "a fresh market, local sales cultivar" upon release, reflecting its real, practical strength: exceptionally large fruit, among the largest blueberries produced by any commercial variety, genuinely comparable in size to a cherry. Because the berries are so large and ripen slowly and unevenly along the cluster, Chandler is generally best hand-picked rather than machine-harvested, a real, practical trade-off that has kept it more common in home gardens, farmers markets, and pick-your-own operations than in large-scale commercial shipping operations. It ripens relatively late in the harvest season and continues producing over an unusually long picking window, genuinely extending fresh blueberry availability later into the summer than many other varieties.