Florida’s new Sentinel apparently ‘berry good’
Blueberry variety could give farmers’ yields a boost this season
There’s another Sentinel in Florida. And, this one is new, blue, and of the low-chill southern highbush variety.
Meet the Sentinel blueberry, a new variety added to Florida’s $60 million a year blueberry industry. Unlike the Sun Sentinel, this one isn’t yet in supermarkets. It was only released last year.
Its developer, Patricio Muñoz, described it as having just the right amount of acidity and firmness and “just pleasant to eat.”
“It doesn’t have thick skin, the texture is regular, but it’s sweet,” he said. “I believe is what people are expecting when they’re eating blueberries.”
April is the beginning of blueberry season in Florida, which ranked eighth nationally in 2019, with 5,100 harvested acres of blueberries, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
The Sentinel blueberry rated
“high” in flavor testing among several panels at the University of Florida. It’s expected to increase farmers’ yields in central and northern Florida and give them fruit during the best market window, according to a news release.
Muñoz, an assistant professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, named the berry in honor of a former colleague, the now-retired Alto Straughn.
Straughn owned blueberry farms near Waldo, Fla., northeast of UF’s Gainesville campus. Those farms are where the Sentinel variety was first planted 12 years ago.
The Sentinel’s main growing areas are central and northern Florida, but it has been grown successfully in fields as far south as Arcadia, Fla., which is between Orlando and Fort Myers.
Muñoz thought the Sentinel name was a perfect way to honor Straughn and his creation. By definition, sentinel is “a guard that keeps watch.”
Straughn gave the program the support it needed through hard times, according to Muñoz.
“Alto was like a guard, like a sentinel,” Muñoz said. “(He was) like a guardian of the breeding program.”