Blueberry (Vaccinium sp. L.) is one of the most important fruit crops from the Ericaceae family and the highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is the most widely grown species. It's popularity is increasing day-by-day because of their unique flavor and rich nutritional content. Consequently, significant efforts have been made to develop superior cultivars with high yield, biotic and abiotic stress resistance using conventional breeding. However, due to high heterozygosity, polyploidy and long juvenile period, traditional breeding approaches can often be tedious and time consuming. Therefore, there is need to integrate modern precision breeding tools with traditional ones, to accelerate blueberry crop improvement. However, the success of novel biotechnological tools like gene editing and conventional transformation relies on successful shoot regeneration system. Many studies in blueberry show a lack of reliable regeneration protocols and their genotype-dependency. Furthermore, most of the reported regeneration studies have been conducted on northern highbush blueberry (NHB) cultivars. Therefore, the current study aims to develop shoot regeneration protocol for seven important southern highbush blueberry (SHB) cultivars (Colossus, Optimus, Albus, Arcadia, Keecrsip, FL 14-242
