Project Description

What is VacCAP?

The Vaccinium Coordinated Agricultural Project (VacCAP) is a nationwide coordinated transdisciplinary project focused on addressing major bottlenecks limiting the growth of the U.S. Vaccinium industry by developing and implementing marker assisted selection (MAS) capacity in breeding programs.  Completing this will enable breeders to select and pyramid fruit characteristics that positively contribute to fruit quality and market value. Long term, the scientific resources developed during the project will increase production of fruit with improved characteristics that meet ever-changing industry, market, and consumer preferences.
 

Objectives

  1. Establish genomic resources to enable effective association mapping studies in blueberry and cranberry.
  2. Discover DNA markers and fruit characteristics that maximize industry profitability and match consumer preferences in blueberry and cranberry.
  3. Deliver molecular and genetic resources to improve blueberry and cranberry fruit quality traits that maximize industry profitability and match consumer preferences.
  4. Assess the potential socio-economic impact of blueberry and cranberry fruit quality improvements on market demand.
  5. Engage U.S. Vaccinium breeders and stakeholder groups to transfer advanced phenomics and genomics tools to build a more coordinated and efficient cultivar development system.