Bioscience Evidence 2026, Vol.16, No.4, 291-303 http://bioscipublisher.com/index.php/be 300 flavonoids, and vitamin C. Future breeding programs, cultivation practices, and postharvest technologies will place greater emphasis on improving quality throughout the production chain, allowing blueberries to better meet the demands of fresh consumption, functional food processing, and premium markets. High-quality production will increasingly rely on a whole-chain quality management strategy, covering cultivar selection, orchard establishment, water and nutrient management, harvest decisions, and postharvest preservation. Future blueberry evaluation standards will gradually move beyond yield per unit area and incorporate multiple indicators, including fruit appearance, flavor, bioactive compound content, storage performance, and commercial value. This transition will promote the transformation of the blueberry industry from “high-yield production” toward “high-quality and high-efficiency production”. 6.2 Sustainable orchard management Future blueberry orchard management will place greater emphasis on efficient resource utilization and ecological protection, aiming to improve production efficiency while maintaining stable fruit quality. Considering the shallow-rooted and acid-loving characteristics of blueberry, continuous improvement of soil or substrate conditions will be essential. Practices such as appropriate mulching, organic matter supplementation, precise irrigation, and balanced fertilization can improve nutrient use efficiency, maintain root activity and plant health, and reduce unnecessary resource inputs while ensuring stable fruit quality. With the development of sustainable agriculture, the concept of sustainable blueberry production will expand beyond simply reducing fertilizer and pesticide use. It will also include carbon emission reduction, improved water-use efficiency, and reduced postharvest losses. Future production systems should further integrate environmentally friendly inputs, biostimulants, smart irrigation, and digital management technologies to establish a green production system covering cultivation, harvesting, storage, transportation, and marketing. Such approaches will improve resource efficiency and enhance the overall economic value of the blueberry industry. 6.3 Digital and intelligent quality management Traditional blueberry production largely relies on growers’ experience to determine fruit maturity, irrigation timing, and fertilization schedules, which is difficult to meet the requirements for stable quality in large-scale commercial production. In the future, non-destructive technologies such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and hyperspectral imaging will play increasingly important roles in fruit quality monitoring. These technologies can rapidly obtain information related to soluble solids content, maturity, internal fruit quality, and some bioactive compounds, providing support for harvest prediction and quality grading. Meanwhile, machine vision and artificial intelligence algorithms can identify changes in fruit color, maturity stage, and disease symptoms. Combined with drone-based remote sensing, these technologies can monitor canopy structure, plant nutritional status, and water stress, helping growers optimize irrigation, fertilization, and harvesting strategies to improve management efficiency and fruit quality consistency. Digital twin orchards may become an important direction for future intelligent blueberry production. By integrating weather data, soil sensors, smart irrigation systems, plant growth information, and fruit quality data, dynamic orchard models can be developed to predict and optimize blueberry growth processes, enabling a transition from experience-based management to data-driven decision-making. Future efforts should strengthen the integration of horticulture, artificial intelligence, and agricultural engineering, transforming digital tools into practical solutions that can be adopted by growers and promoting blueberry production toward greater precision, efficiency, and quality (Figure 4). 6.4 Strengthening field-based production research Although significant progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms underlying blueberry quality formation, many current studies are still based on laboratory experiments, short-term treatments, or single production regions. The long-term stability and commercial applicability of these findings require further validation under real orchard conditions. Future research should focus on multi-year, multi-location, and multi-cultivar field trials, establish standardized fruit quality evaluation systems, and systematically investigate
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