Blueberry is DJ Short's mostly indica cultivar, a line his own seed company dates to the late 1970s. He built it from Thai sativa mothers and an Afghani male, then spent years selecting for the finished flower.
The payoff came decades later. Blueberry took the indica title at the 2000 High Times Cannabis Cup, and its genetics went on to anchor a whole family of blue-named strains.
DJ Short and the Thai-mother approach
DJ Short is the working name of Daniel John Short, a Detroit native who began serious breeding in 1978. The Blueberry expression people know today appeared around 1979 or 1980. His guiding rule was that breeding starts and ends with the quality of the finished cannabis, and he sometimes smoked a line for six months before release.
His method flipped the norm of the era. Most breeders used female Afghans as mothers, but DJ Short pollinated sativa females with indica males. His son, JD Short, told Willamette Week that his father did not like the Afghan smoke and that every one of his strains was about the end product.
The building blocks were Thai, Chocolate Thai, Afghan and Oaxacan genetics. Weedmaps describes the core cross as a male Afghani landrace, only one generation removed from Afghanistan, crossed with two Thai females: Highland Thai, also called Juicy Fruit, and Purple Thai.
From Eugene to Amsterdam and the Cannabis Cup
Eugene, Oregon, played a big part in how the genetics spread. JD Short describes the town as a stopover for musicians traveling between Portland and Northern California. Visitors picked up genetics there and carried them south, where Blueberry took root across the California scene.
Europe came next. In the 1990s, Dutch Passion founder Henk van Dalen worked with DJ Short and brought Blueberry, Flo, Blue Velvet and Blue Moonshine to the European market.
Leafly records the 2000 High Times Cannabis Cup win for indica. Weedmaps credits that year's entry to Noon, with Dutch Passion's version taking third place in the Indica Cup at the 2002 Cannabis Cup. DJ Short later landed in the High Times Seed Bank Hall of Fame.
Purple buds on a 7–9 week clock
Leafly lists flowering at 7–9 weeks, with medium-to-high yields and moderate difficulty. Weedmaps puts the window at 49–56 days and describes medium-to-tall plants with above-average yields. Both point to indoor growing and the sea of green method as a strong fit.
The finished buds come in dense, sticky and purple-hued. Weedmaps lists THC at 16–24%, while Leafly gives a 17% average with some samples testing far higher. The flavor, true to the name, tastes like fresh blueberries.
Leafly users most often tag the effects as sleepy, relaxed and happy. That lines up with the mostly indica build and the Afghani male in the cross.
Blueberry F5 and the extended family
DJ Short Seeds operates under the Old World Genetics banner, and its current seed release is Blueberry F5. That fifth-generation line runs roughly 80% indica and 20% sativa. The same catalog holds Flo and Vanilluna, plus later releases such as Whitaker Blues, Azure Haze and F-13.
DJ Short also wrote Cultivating Exceptional Cannabis: An Expert Breeder Shares His Secrets, laying out the selection approach behind the Blue family. JD Short stayed in Eugene and launched Second Generation Genetics, while Old World Genetics moved to the Los Angeles area.
Blueberry shows up throughout modern lineages too. Berry OG, bred by 710, crosses Blueberry with OG Kush and has its own offspring in Sour Berry OG.