Pearl Blueberry

Pearl is a public-domain blueberry cultivar developed by the USDA-ARS Thad Cochran Southern Horticultural Laboratory. Plants of Pearl are vigorous and productive with dark green foliage and have a moderately spreading growth habit and narrow crowns. Pearl produces very large (greater than 3.0 g), attractive, light blue, firm berries with excellent flavor and small picking scars. Through comparison of flowering dates with those of other blueberry cultivars with known chilling requirements, Pearl is estimated to have a chilling requirement of 400 to 450 h below 7 °C based on a comparison of its flowering dates to those of other blueberry cultivars with known chilling requirements. Pearl is expected to perform well not only in the Gulf Coast region and other areas within USDA hardiness zones 7a through 9a where southern highbush blueberry cultivars with low to moderate chilling requirements are grown successfully. Field evaluations demonstrated that important berry quality attributes including berry size, color, and firmness were consistently better for Pearl than all cultivars evaluated and that berries had small picking scars and good flavor.

Zone: 7-9

Size: 12 cm pot. Large plant.