31 March 2017.
Mississippi, United States
Comment: ‘Gumbo’ is a new southern highbush blueberry (Vaccinium spp. hybrid) developed and released by the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service. The new cultivar has several advantages for blueberry growers in the Southeastern U.S. Among these are earlier ripening period (2-3 wks.) than the earliest rabbiteye blueberry cultivars, the predominant type of blueberry grown in the Southeastern U.S. In comparison to other southern highbush cultivars possessing adaptation to the U.S. gulf-coast, Gumbo has consistently shown greater plant vigor; when coupled with early ripening, good yield potential, and high fruit quality traits, Gumbo is expected to provide growers along the U.S. gulf-coast, and other subtropical regions where blueberries are grown, enhanced opportunities to compete in the lucrative early fresh berry market.
Blueberries, in particular the native rabbiteye blueberry (V. virgatum, Aiton) have been grown commercially in the Southeastern U.S. for over a century. However, southern highbush blueberry (V. corymbosum, L.) hybrids are continually gaining importance in much of this geography because of their early ripening characteristics and amenability to the lucrative fresh U.S. berry market. Southern highbush blueberry production is widespread in several states, particularly GA, FL, and NC where plantings are typically in favorable soils possessing relatively high levels of organic matter. However, progress in gaining broader acceptance of the southern highbush type blueberry by growers in southern AL, MS, LA, and TX, where soils have very low organic matter content has been slower since successful southern highbush blueberry production requires the addition expensive soil amendments such as pine bark (Braswell et al.). Also, few southern highbush cultivars possess the moderate chill hour requirements (300 – 500 hours < 7o C) unique to this region (very low chill cultivars often suffer frost damage while cultivars with high chilling requirements bloom too late for optimizing earliness). Several area producers have installed plantings of adapted southern highbush cultivars such as ‘Star’ (Lyrene and Sherman, 2000) and ‘Santa Fe’ (Lyrene and Williamson, 1997), which have chill hour requirements of 300 – 400 hours, and have shown excellent survival in the field. However, additional cultivars possessing greater adaptation coupled with the ability to produce high quality, earlier ripening berries will facilitate increased acreage being devoted to southern highbush blueberries.
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Origin and Description 'Gumbo' (tested as MS 1377) originated from a cross of ‘Cara’s Choice’ (Ehlenfeldt et al., 2005) x MS 6 and was selected in 2003 at the USDA-ARS Thad Cochran Southern Horticulture Laboratory in Poplarville, MS (Figure 1). ‘Cara’s Choice’ was derived from the cross of G 144 (northern highbush, (NH) x US 165. US 165 was a complex species hybrid (southern highbush, SH) resulting from crosses among V. corymbosum selections and cultivars (both northern and southern highbush), V. darrowii (Camp), V. constablaei (Gray), and several V. virgatum (rabbiteye, RE) selections and cultivars. MS 6 originated from crosses among NH and SH. Hence, the name ‘Gumbo’ was chosen to reflect the diverse combinations of both southern and northern blueberry species contributing to the genetic makeup of this new cultivar.
Plants of ‘Gumbo’ are vigorous and productive with dark green foliage and have an upright growth habit and narrow crowns. ‘Gumbo’ produces large, attractive, light blue, firm berries with excellent flavor and small picking scars. Through comparison of flowering dates to those of other blueberry cultivars with known chilling requirements, ‘Gumbo’ is estimated to have a chilling requirement of 350 to 400 hours below 7°C. ‘Gumbo’ is expected to perform well not only in the Gulf-coast region, but also in other areas where southern highbush blueberry cultivars having low to moderate chilling requirements are grown successfully.
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