ABSTRACT
The lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Ait.), a perennial, rhizomatous cross-pollinated shrub, is native to Newfoundland and Labrador with a diverse distribution ranging from northeastern to midNorth America (Vander Kloet, 1988). It is a commercially important crop in Maine, Quebec, and the Canadian Atlantic Provinces (Hoefs and Shay, 1981), where wild stands, made up of numerous heterogenous genetically diverse clones, are commercially managed and harvested. Their genetic variation for traits affecting yield (berry size, number of berries per cluster, stem density) results in more and less fruitful areas in a field. Furthermore, incomplete coverage results from inadvertent kills of plants from applied herbicides, erosion that had been prevented by weeds, and ‘scalping’ by machinery is very common in commercial lowbush blueberry fields (Metzger and Ismail, 1977; Morrison et al., 2000). Using high yielding clones to fill in bare spots in existing fields will make the current management practices more efficient and result in higher yields at a lower cost per pound.
