Berries Unlimited, LLC has developed a blackberry propagation process that not only produces accelerated growth, but yields healthier, more robust, disease-resistant plants. The new method is a proprietary blend of currently accepted practices with the addition of new, state-of-the-art technologies.
The production of blackberries is a huge industry in Arkansas and has been for well over 100 years. In 2004, the State produced approximately 2 million pounds (1,000 tons) of blackberries on 500 acres. This averaged to 4,000 pounds per acre.
Increased production – while maintaining a quality product – is important in any industry. It's even more crucial in food source production. The North American Honeyberry Corporation, DBA Berries Unlimited, is committed to research and development of improved blackberry propagation. The company is a licensed blackberry cultivar propagator for the University of Arkansas.
Lidia Delafield – scientist, renowned germination expert, and owner of Berries Unlimited – and managing director of Hare Delafield, botanical scientist, studied the top successful propagation and growing techniques used in blackberry plant production. Through extensive testing, they developed a process that took the best of these techniques and combined them into a proprietary and highly successful methodology.
Combining these techniques with state-of-the-art research in variable light control and sound wave resonance, the Delafields have developed a program that creates accelerated growth, raising blackberry plants to maturity in half the time of traditional methods.
With a potential daily output of 10,000 new plants each day and those plants growing to sellable size in less than 90 days, the new propagation method could prove to be of significant economic value to the state of Arkansas and the industry as a whole.
The company is currently going through the process of becoming the only Arkansas State certified producer of certified blackberry plant stock. The intense and complex process is expected to be completed sometime in the third or fourth quarter of 2014.
