A $4 million study called BLUE-DYNAMO will examine blueberry fruit rot and involve scientists across the country.

Michigan State University will lead the four-year project, which includes researchers from Washington State University and the USDA labs in Corvallis, Ore.

The study was funded by a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Timothy Miles, an assistant professor at MSU and project leader, said there hasn’t been a coordinated effort across the United States to tackle blueberry rot.

The project will investigate management techniques and how they impact onset of the disease, apply molecular tools to accelerate the detection of fungicide resistance and generate cultivar-specific models to predict vulnerability to rot.

Blueberry fruit rot has become more pronounced because fungicide resistance has increased over time, Miles said.

Blueberry fruit rot also poses more of a problem with mechanized harvest, which the blueberry industry is turning to due to higher labor costs and a worker shortage, he said.

“Mechanization is great, but it can cause damage to fruit” and that makes berries more susceptible to rot, Miles added.

T.J. Hafner, Oregon Blueberry Commission research coordinator and a member of the stakeholder advisory board for the project, said fruit rot can lead to complete losses of crops when severe.

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During years conducive to blueberry fruit rot on the West Coast, with more rainfall and humidity than normal, “You could realize the fungicides we are using aren’t working anymore,” Hafner said.

Thankfully, the Northwest weather hasn’t promoted blueberry fruit rot for several years, he added.

Blueberry rot types

Two of the most common blueberry diseases in the country are Botrytis fruit rot, which primarily occurs on the West Coast, and Anthracnose fruit rot, often seen in the Midwest and East Coast.

Botrytis appears as gray mold on blueberries and other crops, such as strawberries, raspberries and grapes.

Anthracnose can also be found in Oregon and Washington, Hafner said. It wilts blueberries and produces spore masses that appear as orange speckles.

Miles said the pathogen that causes anthracnose also poses problems in apples and strawberries.

Research such as fungicide resistance diagnostics and methods of detecting pathogens should transfer across crops, Miles added.

Study name

The serious project has a cheeky name. Blueberries are sometimes called “little blue dynamos” for their nutritional benefits.

BLUE-DYNAMO is an acronym building on that reputation – Building the Latest Understanding in Extension-Disease Management that Yields New and Meaningful Outputs.

Blueberry production

Oregon and Washington are world powerhouses in blueberry production.

In 2022, Washington was the top blueberry producer in the United States, with a crop of 180 million pounds valued at $187 million. Oregon’s harvest was 158 million pounds worth $183 million, according to USDA statistics.

Combined, those two states accounted for about 54% of the nation’s blueberry production and 37% of the crop value in 2022.

Michigan produced 58.4 million pounds of blueberries in 2022.