Establishing Honeyberry Collaborative Trials using SeedLinked to Crowdsource Cultivar Performance Data and Inform Grower Selections

Commodities

Practices

Honeyberry is an exciting new perennial crop for growers throughout the North Central Region for fresh fruit and processing markets. Over the past 10 years, breeding programs in North America have released a number of cultivars that are far superior to what was previously available. As a result, we are seeing increased adoption from growers. However, as with many emerging crops, significant hurdles make adoption risky. Growers report dramatic differences in yield, growth habit, and flavor among cultivars and cite a lack of reliable information about cultivar selection and best management practices. 

This proposal seeks to build a public-private partnership between growers, university researchers, plant breeders, and SeedLinked, a variety trial management platform (B corp). SeedLinked is an innovative, two-sided platform designed to crowdsource variety performance data from growers and share collective knowledge through an open-source search engine. SeedLinked has proven to be a powerful tool to inform growers and breeders of annual crops but has not yet been utilized for perennials. This project aims to crowdsource performance data on honeyberry cultivars from a large network of commercial growers, and test and optimize SeedLinked for use with perennial crops using honeyberry as a pilot. 

This proposal has two main objectives:

1. To crowdsource performance data on honeyberry cultivars (ranging from pre-commercial to commercial) from a large network of commercial growers, university researchers, and plant breeders; and to make those insights freely available to all stakeholders. 
2. To test and optimize SeedLinked’s crowdsourcing model and information sharing platform for use with perennial crops using honeyberries as a pilot.