In the village of Kosanica in Pljevlja, Baran's Nikola Macanović is building an American blueberry plantation on an area of one hectare.
The young civil engineer from Pljevlje decided to take this step because, as he says, he believes that agriculture can make a good living.
"I was born in Bar, I work in Tivat, but I consider this a very serious job. We approach this professionally and I don't want it to be limited to some individual production at all. We are planning to increase the area of plantations and to make a serious story", points out Nikola, who is working hard these days on the realization of his plans.
He says that he came up with the idea to grow blueberries two years ago
"The idea came from me. My father and I talked about it, worked out the idea, and here we are managing to put it into practice. I hope a few more days and the planned work will be completed. It is a matter of planting the American highbush blueberry on an area of one hectare. We took two varieties, the first is duke, it ripens a little earlier, at the end of July and the beginning of August, and the second variety is aurora, and it ripens a little later, at the end of August and the beginning of September. Half a hectare will be used for both varieties", explains Macanović.
According to the project, it is planned to plant 3.200 blueberry seedlings, and Macanović says that they have planted about 2.000 so far.
They got the seedlings in the Netherlands.
Nikola says that investments per hectare range from 50 to 100 thousand euros.
They bought seven hectares of land in Kosanica with their own funds, and the rest are financed with the money they received for the project from the Investment Development Fund.
"I can say that we approached this project professionally. We hired a company that professionally deals with this, which helped us, gave us some guidelines, instructions. We were approved for credit, which allowed us to bring the works to an end and plant the material. Our goal is to comply with all advice and standards in order to achieve the greatest possible harvest. We will acquire an anti-hail network, as well as an irrigation system, which is mandatory. Due to this situation, we are not yet in a situation to get it, but it is not that urgent for us yet, because in the first year it is not that necessary for us", Macanović points out. Macanović decided to grow blueberries because, as he says, it is a healthy fruit that is increasingly popular in the world.
"Since this blueberry is a fruit that is popular in the world due to the fact that it is widely represented in terms of healthy nutrition, healthy living, and fitness that today's lifestyle strives for, we decided to start growing blueberries and have a quality product," points out Nikola .
Macanović expects the first crop next year.
"We don't expect any crop this summer. In this season, we only prune the plant, while next summer we expect a small yield, approximately 800 to 900 grams of fruit per plant. This yield increases every year, so in some two to three years we expect a full crop of 4 to 5 kilograms per plant. If, of course, we follow the growing recommendations correctly, we expect to have an annual yield of 13 to 16 tons per hectare," Macanović points out.
Macanović claims that it is not difficult to market this product, if you try hard enough.
"I'm an optimist by nature, so I think we can make it. Montenegro is a small market, but it is very active in the summer months when the blueberry arrives as a fruit. We have taken our summer tourist season, which is getting more and more developed every year, as something where we will try to market the product and find buyers who come from abroad. Apart from them, of course, there are also domestic consumers".
It looks for moisture and higher altitude
The high-bush American blueberry originates from the USA. It reaches a height of 3-4,5 meters, and thrives best in moist habitats and at higher altitudes. Due to the specificity of the root system, it is very sensitive to drought. Blueberries are also grown on slightly larger areas in Canada, the Netherlands, England, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany...
Blueberry belongs to the group of berry fruit trees and is very important and useful in terms of nutrition and medicinal properties of the fruit. 4 - 6 euros, depending on the quality, is the purchase price of a kilogram of blueberries in bulk, says Macanović
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