The results showed that the main compound categories of aromatic components were alcohols, esters, terpenes and ketones for all half-highbush blueberry cultivars.
Looking back at the original collections, they found around 80% of cultivars lacked these beneficial blocks of genes, suggesting there was considerable room for improvement.
“We find that there are changes to the architecture of modern soybean cultivars that can be made to help us improve on many of these goals, ” said Drewry.
But their variety is under-exploited, and much of it is found in poorly studied " landraces" -local varieties that have some genetic coherence but are not as selectively bred as modern cultivars.