Biloxi

'Biloxi' is a southern highbush blueberry released in 1998 by the USDA-ARS Small Fruit Research Station at Poplarville, Mississippi, with the release notice published by Spiers, Stringer, Draper and Gupton in Acta Horticulturae 574. It was bred for the coastal plain of the southeastern United States, where standard northern highbush cultivars never get enough winter chilling to crop properly. Although predominantly a tetraploid southern highbush, its adaptation to southern conditions was pulled in from two diploid and one hexaploid Vaccinium species, so it is an interspecific hybrid rather than a straight Vaccinium corymbosum. Its commercial argument is timing: Biloxi blooms very early, at roughly the same time as 'Climax' rabbiteye, and its fruit ripens some 14 to 21 days ahead of the earliest rabbiteye cultivars, which is exactly where the price premium sits in Gulf-state markets. Mississippi State Extension puts its ripening in late April there, a few days ahead of 'Jubilee'. That same early bloom is the catch, and MSU's two variety write-ups actually disagree about how badly it exposes the crop to late spring freezes.