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.