Ridley Bell is the founder and owner of Mountain Blue Farms in New South Wales (NSW) Australia. He’s been actively involved in the blueberry industry in Australia since 1975, when he began assessing northern highbush seedlings at the Horticultural Research Institute in Knoxfield. He released the variety Brigitta from that program. In 1981, he moved to Northern NSW to grow low-chilling varieties that would ripen in the window between the end of the Northern Hemisphere season and the start of the season in a number of Southern hemisphere countries. Since that time, Mountain Blue Orchards P/L has released a number of new blueberry varieties for warm climate areas around the world, with the breeding team assessing 8,000 to 10,000 seedlings from up to 120 crosses each year. The breeding program has a strong emphasis on consumer quality, never compromising on flavor, fruit size, texture or productivity. Mountain Blue Farms is a vertically integrated company, breeding new berry varieties, growing the plants in a wholesale nursery, and harvesting the fruit from over 120 hectares in a number of locations. Mountain Blue Marketing P/L was established by Bell’s family to market fruit from their own farms and for third-party growers.