BACKGROUND: Blueberry fruit available in the market comes from cultivars that have been selected for specific traits and not
necessarily for high concentrations of health-promoting phytochemicals in the fruit.
OBJECTIVE: To identify and quantify the total and individual phenolic components and other quality traits from a combination
of cultivars from two Vaccinium species (V. corymbosum and V. virgatum). The cultivar combination provided a continuous and
extended fruit harvest.
METHODS: Fruit samples were collected from cultivars growing in a randomized complete block design. The phenolic components
were assessed on fruit extracts, the fruit weight and firmness were assessed on fresh fruit and the rest of the traits were
assessed on fruit juice.
RESULTS: For most traits the differences between Vaccinium species and cultivars were considerable. Strong and positive
correlations were found between phenolic components and between fruit traits. For each cultivar the majority of the traits analysed
in this work from a single year were highly correlated to the average across the three years of evaluation. Assessing traits from a
single year of data should be mostly reliable for individual cultivars.
CONCLUSIONS: The combination of cultivars in this study was designed to offer the widest possible harvest window; however,
it gives high variation in fruit quality