Lecture on blueberries announced the opening of the village library in Majur

Due to the great interest of our farmers to start growing blueberries, on Saturday, 23 February two more lectures -Growing and marketing of blueberries to the European market- were held. The lecturer was Ivan Djuknic, the owner of the Agricultural cooperative Prima borovnica from Belanovica. The lectures were held in the villages of Majur and Glavinci.

Ivan Djuknic is the owner of the Agricultural cooperative Prima borovnica from Belanovica and a successful breeder of blueberries in Serbia. His lectures on conditions for growing blueberries on specific markets (Russia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) and good purchase price of products caused great interest of farmers.  Serbia has excellent conditions for growing this crop.

Blueberries are planted at a spacing of three meters between rows, and in the row itself the spacing is 1.20 to 1.50 meters. Depending on the density of planting, 2,300-2,500 plants per hectare and needed. The yield per one shrub ranges from 5 to 7 kilos. The yield per hectare is 12 to 15 tons. The advantage of growing blueberries in Serbia is the quality of fruit at the time of the harvest.  Blueberries in normal conditions in Serbia can be harvested in the middle of June. At this time in Europe there are not many blueberries, which allow us to cover the gap that exists at that time in the market.

It has also been proved that the quality of Serbian blueberries has advantage compared to other producers’ blueberries. The blueberry development strategy in Serbia should be having plantation in warmer areas at lower altitude, with emphasis on early blueberry varieties. We import high-quality seedlings of American varieties: Duke, Bluecrop, Spartan and others. They are early and medium-early varieties that showed best result in growing in Serbia. At the same time they are varieties mostly grown all over the world. They are known for the excellent quality of its fruits.

Successful blueberry growers from Jagodina, Gvozden Dzelatovic and Nenad Petrovic talked about their blueberry plantations, the challenges and best practices.

The lecture on blueberries in Majur is the first AgroLib Ja project activity that the Jagodina library carried out in this village. On that occasion, the opening of the village library in Majur was announced. Farmers were invited to the lecture through the AgroLib partners, the Agency for Small and medium Enterprises and Registered Agricultural Households, and the president of the local community of Majur, Bojan Cvetkovic.

The locals showed great interest in such lectures. And after the official presentation, they introduced the AgroLib Ja project team with topics for possible future agricultural lectures, that would be significant and useful for the people in this local community.

Also, they expressed satisfaction with opening of the library branch in their village.