Building Premier Blueberry Breeding Headquarters

TO BUILD A BETTER BLUEBERRY, the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is building a better blueberry lab. By mid-2022, we expect to complete U.S. higher education’s premier blueberry breeding headquarters.

- Dr. Angle

Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

It will allow us to expand the team dedicated to delivering Central Florida blueberry growers the cultivars to keep them profitable and globally competitive for decades to come. We’ve long had the best minds in blueberry breeding. Now, we’ll have a place to put even more of them.

Patricio Muñoz has doubled the size of his lab team in his four years as the university’s lead blueberry breeder, and he projects that in the next two to three years it will be triple what he started with in 2017.

I went to visit Muñoz here on campus in Gainesville last month and was delighted to see that dirt was moving on the construction site.