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["Teghtmeyer, Suzanne R" <srt175f@smsu.edu>]

Pupils Get Blueberry Named State Fruit  

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=9&u=/nm/20040113/od_nm/blueberry_dc

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Florida has the orange, Georgia has a peach and now New Jersey has the blueberry as its official fruit.

 

Last year fourth grade students at Veterans Memorial Elementary School in the town of Brick found the state had no official fruit. After debating which fruit best reflected New Jersey, the students settling on the blueberry, introduced their idea as legislation and lobbied for it. On Monday Gov. James McGreevey accepted their recommendation and selected the blueberry as the state's fruit.

 

"With New Jersey being the birthplace of the cultivated blueberry, it is very fitting that the blueberry be named the official state fruit," Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus said in a statement.

 

Blueberries were first cultivated in the Garden State in 1916, by Elizabeth White, whose father owned a cranberry plantation. The Garden State now grows 22 percent of the nation's blueberries, a ranking that puts in second among all berry-producing states.

 

Some 42 million pounds of blueberries were harvested in New Jersey in 2002, which were worth nearly $47 million. Michigan produces the most of the cultivated variety while Maine is the largest producer of the wild variety.

 

----Suzi Teghtmeyer

Paul Evans Library of Fruit Science

Missouri State Fruit Experiment Station and Mid-America Viticulture and Enology Center,

Southwest Missouri State University, Mountain Grove Campus

Evans Library Homepage: http://library.smsu.edu/paulevans/

AgNIC Viticulture site: http://library.smsu.edu/paulevans/viticulture1.shtml

Email: srt175f@smsu.edu