In the blueberry capital of Georgia, where flat coastal plains stretch out on either side of the road, there’s a good chance travelers will drive past fields of bushy blueberry crops growing in long, monotonous rows. A water tower painted with two pale blueberries rises above gas stations and restaurants near U.S. Route 23, marking one’s arrival to the South Georgia town of Alma.
Over the past decade, the Peach State has risen as one of the top producers of blueberries in the U.S. By weight, Georgia now produces significantly more blueberries than peaches as counties like Bacon, Appling and Pierce have established deep blueberry roots in the sandy, acidic soil ubiquitous in southeast Georgia.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Last year, blueberries contributed $382.7 million to the state’s economy, according to the University of Georgia’s Farm Gate Value Report, and the state produced 116.7 million pounds of blueberries. By contrast, Washington and Oregon, the other top states ahead of Georgia, produced 192.4 million pounds and 173.3 million pounds, respectively.
The future of Georgia’s blueberry fields appears rosy, but its continued success hinges on finding new ways to keep blueberries profitable for the growers who invest in them and ensuring that consumers’ love for the superfruit remains strong.
How blueberries found their way to Georgia farms
Berry Blue, a private blueberry breeding program, has rows of blueberry test plots in Alma, where each year, 10,000 genetically unique blueberry seedlings will grow.
Many of those berries will never make it beyond the test plots as Julie Cromie, Berry Blue’s plant breeding manager, and Lushan Ghimire, another berry breeder, make their way through the field, tasting and evaluating each blueberry.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Breeders like Cromie and Ghimire will shape the next generation of blueberries consumers buy in stores, even if we don’t see the fruits of that labor for another decade.
Blueberries are one of the most recently domesticated crops found in the grocery store. While wild blueberries are native to North America and have been foraged and eaten long before the U.S. was even an idea, the domesticated blueberry found its origins in New Jersey at the hands of cranberry farmer Elizabeth Coleman White and USDA horticulturist Frederick Coville in the early 1900s.
There was a budding community of blueberry enthusiasts in the Southeast, too, and by the 1940s, the University of Georgia and the University of Florida both launched blueberry breeding programs.
“This is really the beginning lesson to know how important breeding is to bring the consistency and the shelf life and quality to the blueberry,” said Ye “Juliet” Chu, a horticulturist at UGA’s Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics.
Chu took over UGA’s blueberry breeding program about three years ago from professor Scott NeSmith after he retired. NeSmith himself took over UGA’s blueberry program following Tom Brightwell, who was pivotal in successfully breeding the Rabbiteye, one of Georgia’s native blueberry cultivars. After Brightwell retired in the ’70s, NeSmith contributed more than 40 blueberry varieties throughout his career.
Meanwhile, the University of Florida was experimenting with crossing the Northern Highbush blueberry, which was suited to the northern climate, with a native Florida cultivar that grows in the South. This shouldn’t have worked, since cross-breeding different species isn’t usually successful, Cromie said. But the experiment produced the Southern Highbush, a blueberry cultivar that’s suited to a milder southern climate and is now one of the primary cultivars grown in Georgia.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Blueberry breeding is conducted through artificial selection, where the breeders choose a “mom” and “dad” blueberry variety to cross-pollinate. The seeds of this pairing will grow genetically unique plants that breeders can assess for preferred traits.
While there was a modest group of scientists and farmers working with blueberries in the Southeast, the crop did not capture much interest until the government began disseminating information about the dangers of tobacco in the 1970s. Some Georgia tobacco planters saw a need to shift their focus to a new crop, Chu said, and found themselves able to access the foundational knowledge of blueberry breeding and propagation developed at the University of Georgia and the University of Florida.
“People are looking for alternatives (to tobacco), and guess what? They turn around to grow the world’s most healthy crop,” Chu said with a laugh.
Derrin Wheeler, the chief operating officer of MBG Marketing, a blueberry growing and marketing cooperative under the Naturipe Farms umbrella with a presence in seven states, was born and raised in Alma.
He said while there were some growers who turned from tobacco to blueberries, there were also a lot of people who decided in the ’70s to become farmers for the first time.
“Because land was so abundant, it was cheap,” he said while overlooking Wrigley’s Fields, a newer blueberry farm in Bristol, Georgia, that’s part of the MBG Marketing cooperative.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Few crops thrive in the soil of southeast Georgia. It grows great pine trees, but not much else, Wheeler said. Fortunately, blueberries prefer soil high in organic matter and a PH between 5.5-6, and Bacon County was a gold mine.
The humble blueberry becomes a superfood
Even if there are farmers willing to grow blueberries, there must be consumers looking to purchase them. Perhaps the greatest stroke of “luck” that launched the blueberry’s trajectory into the hearts and shopping carts of consumers was a 1999 study by James A. Joseph, a neuroscience researcher at Tufts University.
According to his study on how strawberries, spinach and blueberries can impact reversals of age-related declines, “These findings suggest that, in addition to their known beneficial effects on cancer and heart disease, phytochemicals present in antioxidant-rich foods may be beneficial in reversing the course of neuronal and behavioral aging.”
A 1999 Associated Press article shared those findings, leading the article with this proclamation: “An antidote to aging may be as close as a nearby farm or the supermarket shelves: blueberries.” And Joseph professed the benefits of blueberries further in his 2003 book “The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan for Optimum Health.”
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
It wasn’t all serendipity, of course. A 2017 article in the Atlantic reported that in the early 1990s, leaders in the blueberry industry began funding research, including through Tufts University, that would highlight the health effects of blueberries. As a result, that initial 1999 study from Joseph allowed the humble blueberry to receive heaps of free advertising.
It was “stuff you couldn’t pay for,” Wheeler said. “We just got on the coattails and rode it for 20 years.”
Since 2007, blueberry production in Georgia has grown from 11 million pounds to over 116 million pounds in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. In 2017, total blueberry acreage in the state was a little over 18,000 acres, and in 2022 that number rose to almost 28,000 acres.
Last year, Georgia actually led the country in fresh market blueberry production, meaning only fresh blueberries and not frozen products.
This growth aligns with consumers’ blueberry consumption; in the early 2000s, blueberry consumption in North America hovered around 1.2 to 1.3 pounds per capita, but now it’s over 2 pounds per capita per day, Ben Campbell said, a UGA professor and extension coordinator in agricultural and applied economics.
“In some form or fashion, blueberries will more than likely continue to be in high demand,” Campbell said. “Now, who fills that demand is another question.”
What does the future of the Georgia blueberry look like?
On Wrigley’s Fields, a family-owned farm that Dan and Amy Hodges established in 2020, it’s a maze of 300 acres of blueberry bushes. The farm is broken up by several ponds, a copse of pine trees and barrack-style housing for the more than 100 seasonal H-2A workers the farm employs.
Dan Hodges believes the future of Georgia’s berry dominance is in finding the right blueberry genetics.
“We’re trying to put genetics in the ground that allow us to (pack 100% fresh fruit) and not outrun our labor, our capacity,” he said. “It’s crucial because the decisions we make today, what we put in the ground, we really don’t see the benefit of until three years down the road.”
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Breeding programs like those at UGA and UF are what initially contributed to the state’s success in finding consistent blueberry varieties, and it continues to play a big role in creating innovative blueberries.
Georgia growers need to make a profit for blueberry agriculture to continue expanding. Blueberry breeders, both in the private sector like Berry Blue and at public universities, must find ways to breed blueberry varieties that address all of the consumer wants while also making it easier and more affordable for growers.
With rising fertilizer and fuel costs, and the high price of labor, especially since the majority of fresh blueberries must be hand-picked, the expenses required to grow and harvest a blueberry crop can be steep.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
On the consumer side, those desires include blueberries that have a firm texture, larger size, sweeter taste and a pleasant aroma. And on the grower end, breeders look for blueberries that will yield enough quantity, can fit a retailer’s desired production window, are durable enough for machine harvesting and are disease-resistant.
While public university breeders are working to address all of these factors — Chu said she’s currently working with more than 1,500 blueberry selections — the private sector has also played a larger role in breeding new varieties in the past 20 years. However, the results from private companies like Berry Blue are proprietary and only available to their clients. Since its founding in 2005, Berry Blue has established 21 unique blueberry varieties.
In both cases, breeding new, successful varieties of berries can take years, sometimes up to 15. Scientists must put the crops through rigorous testing and trial growing seasons to ensure when farmers plant these new varieties, they won’t waste precious time and resources on a plant that fails, Cromie said.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Climate events, like hurricanes in southeast Georgia, are also becoming a necessary consideration in producing durable berries that won’t be wiped out. Abnormally warm winters and late spring freezes are one of the largest threats to berry crops, and it’s a concern the breeders are looking to address.
Chu said her program at UGA recently received a grant to do more research into mitigating the risk of extreme temperatures damaging blueberry production.
“There’s a lot of new challenges and new opportunities that demand the breeding program to be on top and to provide growers with the most money-making berries for our state,” Chu said.
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