By Rosemary Parker
Plant breeder Ed Wheeler won't know for years whether his work will ``ring the bell'' as the next spectacular blueberry variety for Michigan growers, the one that will taste better or store longer or yield greater. The one that will be worth millions to growers.
All he can be sure of is that the growers to profit most from his work will be right here in Michigan.
Wheeler was hired by the Michigan Blueberry Growers Association in Grand Junction to head up its new plant breeding program, and whatever he comes up with will be the domain of growers in Michigan, the nation's leading producer of cultivated blueberries.
Michigan growers ``wanted to be able to grow these themselves for a while without competing with another state,'' Wheeler said.
Competition with other states became a sore spot about two years ago, when a professional nursery in Oregon ended up with exclusive propagation rights to the lucrative Pacific Northwest market for three promising new blueberry varieties released by Michigan State University.
In the end, four nurseries in Michigan won the rights to sell plants east of the Mississippi.
How did a state land-grant university, charged in part with helping Michigan's farmers and economy, come to sell the goods to a competitor?
It was strictly business: Oregon was the top bidder.
``Lo and behold, when everything shakes out, we find out MSU gives the licensing to an Oregon nursery that didn't have penny one invested in anything in this program,'' said Mike DeGrandchamp, a South Haven grower and plant propagator.
DeGrandchamp said he's still smarting because he watched the research on the new varieties for decades, on test plots he and other Michigan growers provided for the good of the industry, at no charge to MSU.
``My biggest concern and disappointment was that (MSU's Office of Intellectual Property) never bothered to ask the Michigan blueberry industry what to do,'' he said.
``When it was your industry that promoted it, pushed it and supplied breeding material and test plots and you get ignored ... well, there's a very, very bad feeling in the blueberry industry toward the university's upper level.''
David Brazelton, president of Fall Creek Farm and Nursery Inc. in Lowell, Ore., holds the rights to that west-of-the-Mississippi territory.
``The last thing we wanted to do was cause any problems or ill feelings with growers or nurserymen in Michigan,'' Brazelton said. ``Our No. 1 job is to supply the market and to supply income back to the university through royalties, to perpetuate the breeding program.''
His company, the largest blueberry nursery in the world, is well able to work in that partnership with MSU, he said.
Variety development is a long, difficult, expensive proposition, and universities generally need outside funding to keep programs alive, Brazelton said.
``What we are interested in is the future of the industry, and we need that excellent team at MSU, the excellent breeders, to continue to develop varieties,'' he said.
``If that's going to continue, they need this royalty flow. They hear that loud and clear.''
Money, money, money
There was a time when the university's plant breeders came up with new material and ``it was basically put out there for anyone to use,'' said Douglas Buhler, associate dean for research at MSU's college of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Now, with licensing agreements, copyrights and patents, all university discoveries -- from software designs to pharmaceuticals to propagated plants and their genetic material -- are potential revenue sources for the university, Buhler said. Everything with a commercial value is considered.
``Personally, I wish we had enough money so we didn't have to worry about (licenses and patents), and the scientists, if you talk to them they would say they wish they could do the work and release things of value in a public way,'' Buhler said. ``But the reality is it's a very different world, funding is different.
``To be honest, the situation with the blueberries has not made anyone happy. It's something we feel bad about, not something we planned.''
Although four Michigan nurseries wound up with the license to sell the new Aurora, Liberty and Draper blueberry plants east of the Mississippi, all Michigan growers can plant the varieties. They may buy their plants from whomever they wish. The nurseries pay a royalty to MSU for every plant sold -- 30 cents per plant in DeGrandchamp's case.
At 1,000 plants per acre, the potential value of the royalties is not chump change.
Brazelton, citing confidentiality clauses, deferred to the MSU's Office of Intellectual Property for specifics of his license; that office did not respond to requests for those details. DeGrandchamp said he doesn't remember how much he paid to have licensing rights for the eastern United States or how much his competitors paid to sell plants west of the Mississippi. A national grower newsletter reported the Oregon nursery paid $30,000 for the licensing rights west of the Mississippi.
The guy in the middle
It was never Jim Hancock's intention to get caught up in the politics of any of this.
A professor of horticulture and director of the plant breeding and genetics program at MSU, he spent 18 years creating these new varieties. Aurora can extend the growing season, maturing about a week later than the latest of other varieties; Liberty is high in antioxidants, an attractive health benefit; Draper is flavorful and hangs on bush longer than any other variety, and its berries store after picking for a long period of time.
``Of course I care (about the anger involving the varieties' release) because ultimately my goal was to develop blueberries for Michigan blueberry growers,'' Hancock said.
Still, ``I'm excited to see my varieties planted as broadly as possible and propagated as efficiently as possible'' -- no matter where, he said.
Michigan is the nation's leader in cultivated blueberry production with 2003 sales valued at $63.1 million. But hanging on to that title may be tough.
Most of the state's acreage is planted with older varieties that don't yield as well as the newer offerings.
And the competition has grown.
Oregon, the top-ranked state in yield per acre of berries, reported 1999 sales still far behind Michigan's, but only because fewer acres are planted with blueberries there. That's changing.
Wei Yang, of the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore., said Oregon is seeing a 10 to 15 percent annual increase in acreage planted with blueberries.
``(Michigan) will receive lot of competition from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, and unfortunately (some of that) will come from the planting of my varieties,'' Hancock said. ``Oregon growers were much more eager to jump on the (new) varieties.''
Independent research
Kirk McCreary, general manager of Michigan Blueberry Growers Association's MBG Marketing, said there is no direct connection between MSU's licensing actions and the cooperative's decision to launch its own breeding program.
In fact, Hancock is on the team of university consultants involved in MBG's breeding program.
``The very best berry companies in the world are developing their own genetics programs and MBG is one of the best of the world, so it's only natural they would have their own program. It's about how to stay competitive in the new marketplace,'' Brazelton said.
And whether Hancock at MSU or Wheeler in Grand Junction or some other plant researcher somewhere else develops the next big money-maker is anyone's guess.
``We've got all the elements,'' McCreary said, ``but it takes time, patience, money and luck.''
``The bottom line,'' Hancock said, ``is we'll be developing our varieties, and independent programs will be developing their varieties, and it will be up to the ingenuity of breeders to develop the best varieties.''