October - December 2017

Native Mississippian Jimmy Buffett has a song called “I Will Play for Gumbo”. It’s a quirky, fun song about his love for the Creole (or Cajun, depending on how you make it) dish. Gumbo is a combination of many ingredients that make something great. In this fashion, the new southern highbush blueberry cultivar released from USDA-ARS is called ‘Gumbo’. Read all about it on page 2. It marks a new era in collaboration between USDA-ARS and Mississippi State University. Some new cultivars will be patented, a first for blueberries from Mississippi, other will be public domain cultivars as was done in the past. Mississippi State University will help with marketing and distribution of these new cultivars both nationally and internationally. There are several other items of interest in this newsletter, so please take a look — maybe over a cup of gumbo.

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