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Blueberries
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Types
| Availability
| Nutritional Value and Fast Facts
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Delicious and
nutritious, we guarantee Nova Agri's highbush blueberries
will make a powerful contribution to any meal !
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Types
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All of our Nova Agri blueberries are highbush cultivated
blueberries - vaccinium corymbosum - as opposed to the low bush vaccinium
angustifolium, which grow wild in Eastern Canada and U.S.  Though wild blueberries are equally nutritious as cultivated blueberries, they
are not always as tasty, owing to the wide variation in the size, colour, and flavour
found from bush to bush. When Elizabeth Coleman White began cultivating blueberries back
in the early 1900's, her objective was to find and propagate those bushes containing the
largest, sweetest, and most succulent of berries. These plants, the Rubel, Harding, Sam,
Grover Adams, and Dunphy (named after the woodsman gatherers who found them) were the
descendants of today's numerous blueberry varieties - all of which are highbush
blueberries.
Nova Agri currently markets over 25 types of berries, most
of which are supplied by our parent company, Dykeview Farms. Dykeview is continuously
searching for the best strains of highbush blueberries for our Nova Scotia climate.
with Nova Agri's stringent standards of quality control,
you can be assured that all berries we supply are large, sweet, and absolutely delicious!
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Availability
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Nova Agri marketed over 500,000 pints of highbush
blueberries in 2000, in addition to the many pints our U-Pick visitors enjoy. Due to the different ripening times of various varieties of berries
and our controlled atmosphere storage facilities, Nova Agri is able to supply blueberries
from mid-July to early November, packaged as follows:
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12 x 1 pint fibre boxes
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12 x 1 pint clamshell boxes
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24 x 170 g clamshell boxes
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24 x 125 g clamshell boxes
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24 x 100 clamshell boxes
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Nutritional Value and Fast Facts
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Traditionally, blueberries have been valued not only for
their delicious flavour, but their nutritious contribution to our vitamin C and fibre
intake. One serving of blueberries (1 cup - 140 g) contains about 18 mg of vitamin C or
30% of the recommended daily intake, as well as high amounts of dietary fibre (4 g per
serving) However, such research indicates we may have
been underestimating the power of blueberries all along, and suggests that they have
exceptional :nutraceutical" value (the ability to prevent and/or treat disease) as
well as nutritional benefits. For instance, according to health and food scientists
investigating the antioxidant capacity of 40 commercially available fruits and vegetables,
blueberries ranked Number One - with 1/2 cup serving delivering as much antioxidant power
as five servings of peas, carrots, squash, broccoli and other foods tested
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What are antioxidants and why are they
so great? Antioxidants are
particular types of plant chemicals (phytochemicals) that help protect your body's cells
from being damaged by unstable oxygen molecules knows as "free radicals".
Research shows that people who eat adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables high in
antioxidants have a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and
cataracts.
Blueberries contain significant quantities
of two types of antioxidants: vitamin C and anthocyanin, the pigment that makes a
blueberry blue. Recent
studies on human nutrition and aging at Tufts University indicate that blueberries in
particular may reverse some age-related impairments such as memory loss and motor
coordination, as well as increase cell membrane fluidity. In Japan it is also widely felt
that the anthocyanin extracted from blueberries can help improve tired eyes. Click here for more details
Since blueberries have five times the
antioxidant power of other produce plus other potential health benefits derived from the
pigment (anthocyanin) it makes good health sense to make this delicious fruit a regular
part of our diet.
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