Agricultural Resilience: The Blueberry Effect

Gary Brown 00:02
Our yields were 1000 to 2000 pounds the acre and 2000 pounds the acre was a big crop. Two years ago, I was in one blueberry field that produced 15,000 pounds to the acre.

David Percival 00:16
It comes down to generating new knowledge that we didn’t know before, and then having that then translate into new technologies.

Stephanie Reid 00:32
Welcome to Beyond research. I’m your host, Stephanie Reid. Today’s episode might seem like a story about boosting blueberry production, but there’s more beneath the surface. It’s a tale of how local research can shape not only an industry, but an entire sector. Joining us are Dr. David Percival, and blueberry veteran Gary Brown. Through his story about blueberries, we’ll explore how this research isn’t just about more blueberries in the box. It’s about influencing agriculture on a broader scale, both locally and internationally. This work is addressing challenges facing all agricultural crops like disease, pests and climate change. Stay tuned to discover the intricate connection between research agriculture and the broader public good.

David Percival 01:26
So, we’re sitting in the Wild Blueberry Research Centre in Debert, Nova Scotia and it provides us with a base or a place where we can do these research trials on wild blueberries. For the research trials themselves, they’re so important for the industry because the industry is only located in the Maritime provinces, Quebec, as well as Maine and as a result of this if a problem arises, you can’t draw on technologies from California from Europe. The solutions have to be found here.

Stephanie Reid 01:53
Dr. David Percival is a professor at Dalhousie Agricultural Campus in the Department of Plant Food and Environmental Sciences. Over the past 24 years, Dr. Percival has worked closely with the farming community to increase the fundamental knowledge of wild blueberry plant biology, soil fertility, plant nutrition and disease management.

Gary Brown 02:15
I’m in education at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College. I worked 19 years there is a berry crop technician and I worked 25 years in the wild blueberry industry and I’m now retired.

Stephanie Reid 02:25
Gary Brown has worked in the blueberry sector for more than 40 years. Although technically retired, Gary is so passionate about wild blueberries, he has remained involved and continues to work closely with Millen Farms, a family-owned sustainable berry farm with over 185 acres of strawberry in over 600 acres of wild blueberry.

Gary Brown 02:45
The disease problems in particular, and I didn’t appreciate them at the time. But by the first September all of our leaves had dropped, you know, on our sprout fields, and so weren’t ready for next year, and everybody accepted that, that was a normal, until David proved to us that those leaves are dropping because of disease.

Stephanie Reid 03:08
And when, in 1996, I can’t imagine there was a huge reliance on research or it wasn’t regarded probably how it is today. Like what, was there reluctance from the growers at the time?

Gary Brown 03:21
Our biggest frustrations at that time we couldn’t find anybody to look at our problems. So, we sat down as a grower group and said, we have to have somebody dedicated to low bush blueberries, because the only research we could get done were people that had other responsibilities as well, be it strawberries, grapes, raspberries or whatever. So, we didn’t have anybody dedicated to the low bush blueberry industry. And that’s when the decision was made: We have to hire somebody. So, we started basically looking, I have to tell a cute antidote in all of this is that Dr. Percival came, applied for the position, came and made a presentation on some of his research trials. It was right in May. And it was right in bloom time. I was, the blueberry industry uses a lot of bees for pollination. I was involved in pollination, I’d been up all night, I sat in the lecture theatre and listened to him. And it was a nice, dark, quiet place and I started to doze off. David noticed that.

David Percival 04:27
It’s quite the first impression.

Stephanie Reid 04:29
Yeah, you nailed it.

Gary Brown 04:32
David could’ve certainly think, he hasn’t got any interest in what I’m talking about. Hell, I was just sleepy.
Stephanie Reid 04:37
Well, and now look at you. Look at how far you’ve come.

Gary Brown 04:41
Because the next week I arrived in his office with a problem and said here, David, we gotta get this solved.

Stephanie Reid 04:47
And did he solve it?

Gary Brown 04:48
Oh, yes.

Stephanie Reid 04:49
Of course he did.

Gary Brown 04:50
Well, we had, it was one of our disease problems we had, you know, why is this happening? And that’s when David started into, when Dr. Percival came on to staff, we were struggling, there’s no doubt about it. Because we didn’t have answers for a lot of our problems.

Stephanie Reid 05:07
How would you describe the state of the blueberry industry in Nova Scotia on the day you arrived at the centre?

David Percival 05:15
Going back to June 1996, when I started work here, the industry has really changed. And when you look at it, total production of blueberries at that time, cultivated and wild was approximately 660 million pounds. That year, the wild blueberry crop was quite low, I think it was in the vicinity of 124 million pounds that was produced. When you look at the industry at the time, it was it was an industry that still had a lot of smaller growers. So there was approximately 1100 blueberry producers at the time, that were trying to manage fields that had been in the families for, in some cases, many generations.

Gary Brown 05:59
And the first thing we had to find was we didn’t even know the diseases that were causing the problems.

Stephanie Reid 06:04
Right.

Gary Brown 06:05

David identified them, saw their lifecycle, and knew when to, when do we have to address these, at what time, with what product? And how time sensitive is that, you know, when, how many days have we got to control this, you know, all of that stuff.

Stephanie Reid 06:21
So basically, in the early 90s, when yields were low, or when the leaves were falling off, as you described, most growers just chalked it up to that’s just the way it is.

Gary Brown 06:33
That’s just the way it is. That is just the way that nature gave it to us. And I gotta give David a lot of credit for that. That’s the first thing he started looking at was, you know, and as he mentioned earlier, what diseases are out there? And what are they doing to us. And I mean, he even went to England and looked at septoria and its lifecycle and determined whether it was the same species that was affecting our blueberries that was affecting, will say, the cereal crops. He started, you know, looking at all of that. And how do we control that species, it’s affecting the blueberry crop versus a cereal crop. So that’s where all this started and it has just progressed over the last 27 years.

Stephanie Reid 07:15
So, before David came before we knew to treat, you know, plants a certain way after the harvest, it was really just kind of well, let’s hope for a better your next year. Let’s just like maybe it was just a one off.

Gary Brown 07:27
I’ll be honest with you that it was a simple life back then. We prune, we prune now by mowing blueberry fields. In those days, we pruned by spreading straw and setting fires to burn these plants off, because the old plants had to be burned off to allow new vegetative buds to come up next spring out of the ground.

Stephanie Reid 07:52
When you first got here, just because I’m curious now, and you saw kind of how it was and what most producers were doing both with, you know, the burning and the, you know, diseases and the crossing of the fingers. Like what was, what were the most surprising things to you, that you didn’t think you were going to encounter?

David Percival 08:13
Having gone through and been raised in a farming background, you tend to see quite a bit of things. So, nothing really surprised me. And especially when you look at some of the challenges, whether it be watching a vineyard go down with gray mold, or apples, well scab is a perpetual problem for apple growers. I just looked at it as okay, well, we know there’s limiting factors there. Now let’s get our head around what they are, when they’re a problem, okay, and what are the tools in the toolbox that we can hopefully develop to address them?

Stephanie Reid 08:50
And what have the results looked like since the research program was put in place?

David Percival 08:55
Well there is already, when you look at the body of knowledge that was out there was definitely a good group of researchers that were here before me. But the challenge has changed. And over time, we really tried to address trying to obtain a better knowledge of how the plant grows, how it develops, and then also some of the stresses that have come along. And in particular, in my case, I’ve ended up focusing quite a bit of my attention on the disease management side of things over the past 20 years. And so, the implications of this are when we started doing this work back in the early 2000s, what was happening is the disease’s would come in, they’d affect the canopy, the leaves would prematurely fall off, there just wasn’t enough resources there for the floral buds to develop in the first year, the vegetative year and as a result of this in the crop year, the crops harvestable berry yields were really quite low. And as a result of this, we’d find out okay, well what’s the organism that’s causing this, how do you control it? And then what are the net effects. So overall, as far as yields are concerned, we’ve gone from approximately 1000 to 2000 pounds per acre, to good fields, now I think we’re in the vicinity of 8000 pounds plus an acre with some, Gary can back this up being well over 12,000 pounds an acre.

Stephanie Reid 10:17
So that’s more berries in the box.

David Percival 10:20
Definitely more berries in the box, yeah.

Stephanie Reid 10:22
And that was that was one of the goals is to identify those threats and how can we produce as Nova Scotia more berries.

Gary Brown 10:28
David has been proactive, instead of reactive. He and I will sat down and look at what the problems are, what we think the problems are going to be, and what research we need to address those problems in the future. And that has really paid off for us big time for the whole industry. The growers rely so much on David’s information. He holds information meetings during the winter months, where the growers will sit down, and everybody’s got a pad and a pen, and they’re taking down his information to apply it to their own farm.

Stephanie Reid 11:03
That’s incredible. And you were talking earlier, when we were chatting outside by the field, you were chatting about just how many of those berries leave the province now, can you talk a little bit about?

Gary Brown 11:14
On an average 90% of Nova Scotia’s blueberry crop is exported, that’s hard to believe. But we are normally in excess of 300 million pounds. And that would be the state of Maine, Maritime provinces, and the province of Quebec as far as the wild industry. So we have to find a home for all of those. And the biggest home right now is Europe. And luckily, the second biggest home is Japan.

Stephanie Reid 11:41
And going back to some of the problems that growers are facing right now out in the fields. Obviously, there are some that you’re investigating right now with some of the blueberry crops outside. Can you tell us a bit about the ones that are high on the list right now for research trials?

David Percival 12:01
Well the two main ones, that weed issues that we’re running into, are definitely posing a challenge. And some of that is just due to there are very few control products, especially with respect to weed management that can be used and the ones that we have been using, there’s some weed issues or weed resistance arising with them. And then there’s also, there’s quite a few new weed species. So there’s a team of researchers now that are addressing these pest management issues working at the Dalhousie Agricultural Campus. And so Scott White in particular, he’s putting in quite a bit of effort into identifying Okay, well, what are they, and then hopefully, the technologies on how to address them will then come from it. On the disease management side, really, it’s broken itself down into two main ones. So as we talked about earlier, in the vegetative year, it’s the leaf spot disease that really became quite an issue. And in particular, we have two: we have one that starts a little bit earlier, so it’s a bit of a complex of an organism where we haven’t really seen much before. So it’s Sphaerulina is what is referred to. There’s also others in there as well. And so it infects the leaf, it causes the leaf to be not as effective at serving as a solar panel to intercept that incoming light energy and turn it into chemical energy the plant can use. So we had that problem early on, and then there’s one that’s a bit of an invasive pest into the area on the disease side, which is blueberry rust.

Stephanie Reid 13:39
Rust?

David Percival 13:39
Rust.

Stephanie Reid 13:40
You don’t hear about rusty blueberries.

David Percival 13:41
No you don’t, but again, it’s one that affects mostly the leaves. But the problem with it is it has alternate hopes. And so in Nova Scotia, a lot of our blueberry fields are located in remote areas surrounded by woodlots. You have an abundance of hemlock situated within them. Well unfortunately, the hemlocks’s the alternate host, and so it can bounce from the blueberries to the hemlock and then back into the blueberry field. And it’s quite, quite damaging. It will really defoliate the blueberries quite effectively as we go into the late summer and into the fall months.

Stephanie Reid 14:15
For those who may not be out in the farms or the fields rather, like you are each and every day people would mainly think of weeds as pests. And yes, we all know weeds, but those are some pretty significant weeds we were looking at out there and what are the effects on the harvesting process with weeds like that?

Gary Brown 14:37
Well it’s interesting, I pointed out this morning, there’s a grass we call fescue, that wet conditions especially like we have in harvest this this year, it winds up in the harvester heads, it strips berries off that don’t end up in the box, they end up on the ground. And to go back to what Dr. Percival said about Dr. White, and some of the research trials he’d done. I’ve been in this industry a long while and I worked with a researcher out of Kentville by the name of Dr. Claus Jensen, who is now retired. And I still remember, and it is very vivid in my mind. He and I were looking at this grass in Parrsboro, and the normal farming methods, what’s controlling it? What is the issue? Why are we not controlling this grass? So Dr. Jensen took samples, and on his way home, he stopped along the roadside, and got the same grass, and took samples off of it and got the seeds out of it, grew them in the greenhouse in the Kentville research station, and then treated them like they would be normally treated in a blueberry field. And the grass on the roadside was dead, instantly. The grass in the blueberry fields never died. So that meant we had to go look at alternative methods, we had to look at new research trials.

Stephanie Reid 15:55
Right, and what are some of those other technologies that you’ve developed outside of the pesticides that can be used?

David Percival 16:00
When you look at some of the tools that, you know, we’re seeing at the source, for example, the UAVs, and these sorts of things. Well, they have a pretty important application now for us as an industry. And so it’s provided us with the opportunity to map our fields and say, Okay, well, how many blueberries are present? Where are they located? And so this allows us then to be far more precise with respect to the inputs that we’re using, it allows us to see, okay, you know, are there some weed issues in the field that are a little bit more of a problem than what we thought initially and down the road, you know, we hear about the systems being used for the delivery of parcels through Amazon and things like this, well, we think we can also use them in the management of the fields as well. So be very specific and localize. Because at the end of the day, we pride ourselves with having a very productive, or a very sustainable production system, so we’re far more sustainable than most other berry crops for sure, as well as other other fruit crops. And so with, with the global market of blueberries, just increasing exponentially, it allows us to continue to differentiate ourselves, and then also keep the cost of production down to allow the growers to remain competitive.

Stephanie Reid 17:17
Very cool. And it just seems that there’s no shortage of new problems that are arising for the industry, blueberries, specifically. And can you tell us just some of the impacts we’ve seen even in the last year, due to climate change here in Nova Scotia, can you just talk a little bit about the impacts of those things on the crops?

David Percival 17:39
So the stresses over the past year have been phenomenal when you look at it starting off with the hurricane last year, and it was one just with that full day of incredibly high winds, it just whipped these stems around that were in the process of trying to form floral buds. And so that was a challenge in itself. And so are our floral bud numbers are down a little bit compared to prior years. And then we went into winter. And at the end of January, early February, we ended up with minus 30 degrees centigrade temperatures, which caused a little bit of winter injury, it caused a lot more damage to the grape, you know, the wine grape sector, and the tender tree fruit, also in the province. But it also pushed us back a little bit. And then we get into this spring where we had incredibly dry conditions. And I’ve never seen fields at the early stages of a growing season where the soil was just almost like powder is was so dry. And then we go to the other end of the spectrum, where just an abundance of rainfall. And what that’s posing now is issues on the disease side. So we’re really starting to see when you pull away the blueberry canopy, because of these wet conditions, the interior is getting a little bit moldy, the abundance of the rainfall is also starting to split some of the berries. So we’re going to be starting to see more and more spoilage as a result of these split berries. And so this is where the technologies we’ve been working on played a pretty important role because some of the treatments that we’ve been using this year can be still healthy. And so that’s a big factor in allowing these blueberry producers to remain competitive.

Stephanie Reid 19:25
That’s great to hear that the crops are still going strong, but I’m guessing that some of these climate events, as we call them, will help inform future trials here at the centre.

David Percival 19:41
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And especially when you’re looking at for example, with some of the disease issues that we’ve been seeing, let’s look at okay, how can you keep these disease pressures down and provide the grower with the tools to allow them to remain competitive in a global economy?

Stephanie Reid 19:58
Right so from the growers perspective, from a Nova Scotia perspective, how is the work here, or how do you see the work here, impacting our agriculture and our economy as a whole long term? And how critical is the ongoing research?

Gary Brown 20:16
I don’t have the figures in front of me to say how valuable the blueberry industry is to the province, but it’s huge. Because it spills over into everything else.

Stephanie Reid 20:27
What have you learned from your work here at the centre that has then been applied to other crops or industries?

David Percival 20:34
When you look at some of the disease issues that we have present in the blueberry fields, a lot of them apply to the other fruit crop sectors. So for example, it doesn’t matter if it’s a strawberry, a blueberry or a grape, gray mold, which is caused by the fungal pathogen Ascomycete Botrytis cinerea, is definitely the culprit of interest. And so when you then look at okay, well, how can we better manage this disease? And control it? It’s, it’s something that once we had a good insight into some of the things that worked, it transfers quite readily to then the other sectors.

Stephanie Reid 21:13
And how is that information shared here in Nova Scotia amongst the other sectors? Or is it? Or is it up to the other sectors to kind of hear what you’re doing here?

David Percival 21:23
It’s, it’s very much, it really starts within the industry. And so, you know, as a researcher, and especially working at a university, you know, you tend to, you tend to initially focus on Okay, well, what’s that publication I’m gonna get, but it’s more than that. It’s, it’s the importance of getting the message out to producers, and then also to the extension specialists working in the region, about these new technologies and their potential fit. And then so once you take that first step in getting the message out to the blueberry growers, then you know the feeder lines all of a sudden start to become quite active. And so then tools, whether it be to the highbush blueberry sector in the valley, or strawberry or grape sector, it generally, it generally moves along quite quickly after that.

Stephanie Reid 22:09
So do you know if many of your technologies have been picked up by other sectors?

David Percival 22:14
Oh, definitely. And especially in the highbush sector, which is amazing that we’re given such a small portion of it now, compared to what’s occurring globally, but some of these technologies are definitely making their way into the larger audience.

Stephanie Reid 22:28
And clearly, your research is having an impact beyond our borders here in Nova Scotia, you had mentioned a partnership with Norway or a collaboration with Norway. Um, can you talk a little bit about any international work you have been doing?

David Percival 22:43
Sure, and I’ll go over a few little things along with that. So as a result of this job, and the research projects that are supported by the producers, and by the Bragg group, group of food companies, is allowed us to collaborate with other universities. So the one in Norway is the Arctic University of Norway, and they have an excellent molecular biologists group there. And so it became really important for us because at the, at the Truro Agricultural Campus, we had a little bit of a roof fire at the research institute where I worked. And so, you know, we were out of commission, and there was just how are we going to allow these students to continue work. And so the PhD student at the time, Joel Abby went to Norway, and he was able to learn these techniques, and everything came together for him. So he really did a nice, nice job on his project as a result of it. Another example of being involved in collaborative activities on a global basis has been, we have an international blueberry meeting happening here next year. So it’s International Vaccinium Symposium. And as a result of being involved in the industry, and in the research community for 27 years now. It’s provided a lot of opportunities. And so I’m actually Chair of the, Chair of the working group of what we call the Vaccinium working group. And so it allows you to gain insight into what’s going on in every area where blueberries are being produced. And then going back, that would not have been possible without the solid support that we’ve had here, both on the producers as well as in the industry sector as well.

Stephanie Reid 24:27
And so last question I have is what are your hopes for the wild blueberry industry here in Nova Scotia? Where would you love to see us be in 5, 10, 20 years’ time in terms of new technology, berry yields, you name it.

David Percival 24:43
So I believe that for the wild blueberry industry to remain competitive in a global economy where so many different countries are now producing fruit. Being able to show and illustrate that we have the most sustainable production system is going to be absolutely essential. And so that’s an area that that is definitely going to be my focus and I hope will continue to be a focus, you know, after I finish my career up as well, is what can be done to try to keep the industry here as competitive as possible, because when you look, in particular at the rural areas, whether it be of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or Prince Edward Island, the opportunities just aren’t as apparent as what you would have in downtown Halifax or in other agronomic areas, you know, like, in the prairie. So you know, we’re just the back the scale is just not there. So, but it’s nonetheless incredibly important to try to keep these areas of the Nova Scotia economy viable.

Stephanie Reid 25:51
Right. Wonderful. Gary, would you add anything to that?

Gary Brown 25:56
Yeah, I would just thinking of that, because I want to look at it from the grower point of view, we know what our input costs are. We’re relying on David’s research, I’ll be very plain about this, but we’re relying on David’s research to give us as many pounds per acre as we possibly can, because we’re paid by the pound. So if our yield per acre goes down, our input costs are still up there, the profit margins certainly deteriorate for the grower. So maintaining these disease problems, in particular what David’s work is, and we never even mentioned the fact that David has done a quite a bit of work on fertility research as well. And that comes with a whole slate of problems on its own, because fertility has worked really well for growing a better plant, growing that solar panel better, but the weeds like fertility as well.

Stephanie Reid 26:47
Right? Weeds love everything.

Gary Brown 26:50
Yeah, so you know, we’re making our own problems there. And we got to kind of solve it all. But in the last day of the week, the grower wants as many pounds per acre as he can get for the least input costs as possible, because that’s where his money is. We have to depend on world prices. And the only time that the grower really makes big money as his input costs are down, his yields are up, and that’s where his profit margin starts to really appear. This year, we don’t know what the price is going to be. So the highest yields possible is where the growers gonna get the money.

Stephanie Reid 27:32
As we’ve heard this wild blueberry research isn’t just about yields. It’s about cultivating a sustainable future for agriculture. Dr. David Percival’s work exemplifies how specific research can have universal application, transcending borders and benefiting entire sectors. The next time you enjoy those juicy blueberries, remember that the story behind them reaches far beyond the fields. Thank you for joining us on Beyond Research. Until next time, stay curious.

Stephanie Reid 28:13
We hope you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us five stars. You can also follow us on social at Beyond Research Podcast and let us know what research topics you would like to hear on the podcast. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time.