Blueberry vs. Blackcurrant

Main Difference

The main difference between Blueberry and Blackcurrant is that the Blueberry is a section of plants, the Blueberries and Blackcurrant is a species of plant

• Blueberry

  Blueberries are perennial flowering plants with blue– or purple–colored berries. They are classified in the section Cyanococcus within the genus Vaccinium. Vaccinium also includes cranberries, bilberries, and huckleberries. Commercial “blueberries” – including both wild (‘lowbush’) and cultivated (‘highbush’) blueberries – are native to North America. The highbush blueberry varieties were introduced into Europe during the 1930s.Blueberries are usually prostrate shrubs that can vary in size from 10 centimeters (3.9 in) to 4 meters (13 ft) in height. In commercial production of blueberries, the species with small, pea–size berries growing on low–level bushes are known as “lowbush blueberries” (synonymous with “wild”), while the species with larger berries growing on taller cultivated bushes are known as “highbush blueberries”.

  The leaves can be either deciduous or evergreen, ovate to lanceolate, and 1–8 cm (0.39–3.15 in) long and 0.5–3.5 cm (0.20–1.38 in) broad. The flowers are bell-shaped, white, pale pink or red, sometimes tinged greenish.

  The fruit is a berry 5–16 millimeters (0.20–0.63 in) in diameter with a flared crown at the end; they are pale greenish at first, then reddish-purple, and finally dark purple when ripe. They are covered in a protective coating of powdery epicuticular wax, colloquially known as the “bloom”. They have a sweet taste when mature, with variable acidity. Blueberry bushes typically bear fruit in the middle of the growing season: fruiting times are affected by local conditions such as altitude and latitude, so the peak of the crop, in the northern hemisphere, can vary from May to August.

• Blackcurrant

  The blackcurrant or black currant (Ribes nigrum) is a woody shrub in the family Grossulariaceae grown for its berries. It is native to temperate parts of central and northern Europe and northern Asia where it prefers damp fertile soils and is widely cultivated both commercially and domestically. It is winterhardy, but cold weather at flowering time during the spring reduces the size of the crop. Bunches of small, glossy black fruit develop along the stems in the summer and can be harvested by hand or by machine. The raw fruit is particularly rich in vitamin C and polyphenol phytochemicals. Blackcurrants can be eaten raw but are usually cooked in a variety of sweet or savoury dishes. They are used to make jams, jellies and syrups and are grown commercially for the juice market. The fruit is also used in the preparation of alcoholic beverages and both fruit and foliage have uses in traditional medicine and the preparation of dyes.

  As a crop, the blackcurrant suffers from several pests and diseases. The most serious disease is reversion, caused by a virus transmitted by the blackcurrant gall mite. Another is white pine blister rust which alternates between two unrelated hosts, one in the genus Ribes (blackcurrant included) and the other a white pine. This fungus caused damage to forests when the fruit was first introduced into North America, where the native white pines have no genetic resistance to the disease. As a result, the blackcurrant has for most of the 20th century been subject to restrictions in parts of the United States as a disease vector. The effectiveness of these restrictions is questionable, since other Ribes species also host the disease and are native to North America.

  Breeding is being undertaken in Scotland, Poland, Lithuania, Norway, and New Zealand to produce fruit with better eating qualities and bushes with greater hardiness and disease resistance.