VacciniumCAP: Leveraging genetic and genomic resources to enable development of blueberry and cranberry cultivars with improved fruit quality attributes

Status: Vaccinium (blueberry and cranberry) breeders have little empirical data to assign level of importance to fruit characteristics (FCs) relative to consumer preferences, decay during production, processing and distribution, and few tools to select for high fruit quality. As a result, blueberry and cranberry cultivars often produce fruit with inconsistent appearance, texture and sensory profiles that do not consistently meet consumer expectations, processing and production quality needs. The Vaccinium industry recognized the need to improve fruit quality as the key breeding target for continued success.Mission statement: Address major bottlenecks for growth of U.S. Vaccinium industry, by creating a nationwide coordinated transdisciplinary research approach to develop and implement marker assisted selection (MAS) capacity in Vaccinium breeding programs, to enable breeders to select and pyramid fruit characteristics (FCs) that positively contribute to fruit quality and market value. In the long term, this mission will increase production of fruit with improved characteristics that meet the ever-changing industry, market, and consumer preferences.Specific project objective are: 1) Establish genomic resources to enable effective association mapping studies in blueberry and cranberry; 2) Discover DNA markers and fruit characteristics that maximize industry profitability and match consumer preferences in blueberry and cranberry; 3) Deliver molecular and genetic resources to improve blueberry and cranberry fruit quality traits that maximize industry profitability and match consumer preferences; 4) Assess the potential socio-economic impact of blueberry and cranberry fruit quality improvements on market demand; 5) Engage U.S. Vaccinium breeders and stakeholder groups to transfer advanced phenomics and genomics tools to build a more coordinated and efficient cultivar development system.