Hannah's Choice Blueberry

Hannah's Choice Blueberry (Vaccinium sp.) is a new highbush blueberry cultivar with improved sweetness, firmness, and flavor. Hannah's Choice ripens at approximately the same time as 'Duke', the leading early cultivar in New Jersey, and typically reaches 50% ripeness about 2 days earlier than 'Duke'. Its fruit are medium to large sized, medium to light blue, with good scars, and excellent firmness. Fruit is sweet, sub-acid, and mild-flavored with pronounced peach accents. Production in New Jersey on mature plants in mixed plantings has been 60 to 65% of 'Duke' and about 70% of 'Bluecrop'. Table 1 compares fruiting characteristics of Hannah's Choice to 'Duke', and 'Bluecrop'. The high levels of soluble solids in Hannah's Choice represent an approximate 20% relative increase in soluble solids over the average values for 'Duke', and its firmness represents an approximate 10% relative increase over 'Duke'.