As the wild blueberry harvest rolls in across Maine, pickers and customers may find rare surprises in their pint boxes: small white or pink berries that look unripe but don’t taste like it.
These unusual berries are the result of the genetic diversity in the state’s vast wild blueberry fields. Most bear fruit in shades of blue, with variations of light and dark. Light purple, pink or white berries lack the pigment that gives most berries their color, similar to albinism.
One field can have 500 to 1,500 separate genetic individuals, said Lily Calderwood, a wild blueberry specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Each year, those genes create a patchwork of colors and shapes in leaves and berries, which occasionally create albino plants.
make the most of your harvest
As another result of this genetic diversity, berries in the same field also ripen at different rates, meaning you also see some green ones that aren’t good eating. In early stages the fruits are acidic before their sugar content goes up.
Not much else is known about what makes albino blueberries happen and where, how their flavor differs or what else sets them apart. Researchers have the more pressing issues of increasing droughts, late frosts, changing pest patterns, more diseases and labor shortages to adapt to, Calderwood said.
Researchers at the University of Ljubljana did compare albino and blue bilberries, or “European blueberries,” in 2016. The species is related to Maine’s wild blueberries and present in both Europe and North America, and albino berries contained more sugar and organic acids with almost no antioxidants. Albino bilberries were also smaller and retained less water.
the more you know
The light blueberries often taste slightly sweeter, Maine consumers have said, but they are definitely ripe and enjoyable.
The unusual blueberries have fascinated Mainers for decades. In the 1930s, several people sent reports of white berries to the Bangor Daily News, and in one case even delivered some of them to the newspaper’s office.
Albino berries were exhibited at the Bangor State Fair in 1942, and nine years later a Holden 12-year-old received a certificate from the University of Maine attesting that the white berries she’d picked were albino, not unripe. Those berries ended up canned for a 4-H project, the BDN reported.
The rest of the country may not find them so interesting, though. In 1990, the Chicago Tribune reported berry breeders had considered a line of albino high bush berries but doubted consumers would want them.
If farmers ever asked for research on berry albinism, it could be done, Calderwood said. But for now, the university is working on a new S-shaped rake design to minimize berry damage during harvest and a camera-driven berry sorter to make the post-harvest process easier.
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