Bluecrop Blueberry

Bluecrop traces to the cooperative breeding program between the USDA and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, released in 1952 from a cross of two USDA selections, GM-37 and CU-7. That program itself began with USDA botanist Frederick Coville, who in 1911 achieved the first successful crosses between wild highbush and lowbush blueberries after publishing the first scientific blueberry-growing instructions in 1910, working in partnership with a New Jersey cranberry farmer named Elizabeth White who first believed blueberries could be domesticated at all. For more than 70 years, Bluecrop has served as the industry's mid-season benchmark — the control plant used in commercial trials worldwide and the most commonly planted highbush variety across the northern blueberry belt from Michigan and New Jersey to Oregon's Willamette Valley. Its combination of consistent yield, drought tolerance, and climate adaptability has kept it commercially relevant even as many newer proprietary varieties have since been introduced.