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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Incredible History of The Hass Avocado and it's origin.
« on: December 29, 2014, 10:19:36 AM »
Taken from Reddit OP "Hass avocados come from the central California coast. A postal deliveryman named Rudolph Hass saw a magazine ad one day from a south-cali agribusiness coop featuring an image of an avocado tree with dollar bills growing in it.
The idea intrigued him, and he'd grown quite fond of having Fuerte Avocado with his steak dinners. He liked Avocados and thought there might be money in it. He borrowed some money from his family and bought less than 2 acres of land in La Habra that had about a dozen Fuerte trees on it.
He'd enlisted the help of a guy who worked for a local nursery to get his new grove up and running. The first thing they did was chop down 4 or 5 of the existing trees, because they were dying. Then, they bought some seeds, and planted 12 new trees.
When those trees got big enough, they'd be paired back and a sprig from the existing Fuerte trees would be grafted on. One of the trees kept rejecting the graft. The Fuerte sprig wouldn't take hold, but the root stalk maintained a healthy, green appearance.
They made a decision to let the tree do it's own thing. After a few years, when it first started to produce fruit Hass brought some avocados home from this outlier tree. His daughters, who hadn't ever been too excited about avocados suddenly loved these. They were richer, and creamier than the Fuerte variety that was dominant at the time.
Hass found a salesman to help him promote his new variety, but the salesman savvily insisted that Hass patent his new variety. Rudolph Hass was issued the first US patent for a tree in the mid 1930s. The patent never made him a rich man, but before long Hass Avocados would be the #1 grown variety in California.
Hass never quit working as a mailman, and it wouldn't be until the 1990s - 40 years after he died - that Hass avocados would become the global-majority variety.
Today, over 90% of the world's commercial avocado supply is Hass avocados.
Any time you eat a hass avocado, you are eating from a graft of some generations from that original tree. The tree was overcome by a root disease in the mid 1990s, and dead by the turn of the century. It was chopped down within the last 10 years.
There's a house behind a gate on that property today, but the owners maintain a plaque on the spot where Hass avocados came in to existence". (Reddit OP)
The idea intrigued him, and he'd grown quite fond of having Fuerte Avocado with his steak dinners. He liked Avocados and thought there might be money in it. He borrowed some money from his family and bought less than 2 acres of land in La Habra that had about a dozen Fuerte trees on it.
He'd enlisted the help of a guy who worked for a local nursery to get his new grove up and running. The first thing they did was chop down 4 or 5 of the existing trees, because they were dying. Then, they bought some seeds, and planted 12 new trees.
When those trees got big enough, they'd be paired back and a sprig from the existing Fuerte trees would be grafted on. One of the trees kept rejecting the graft. The Fuerte sprig wouldn't take hold, but the root stalk maintained a healthy, green appearance.
They made a decision to let the tree do it's own thing. After a few years, when it first started to produce fruit Hass brought some avocados home from this outlier tree. His daughters, who hadn't ever been too excited about avocados suddenly loved these. They were richer, and creamier than the Fuerte variety that was dominant at the time.
Hass found a salesman to help him promote his new variety, but the salesman savvily insisted that Hass patent his new variety. Rudolph Hass was issued the first US patent for a tree in the mid 1930s. The patent never made him a rich man, but before long Hass Avocados would be the #1 grown variety in California.
Hass never quit working as a mailman, and it wouldn't be until the 1990s - 40 years after he died - that Hass avocados would become the global-majority variety.
Today, over 90% of the world's commercial avocado supply is Hass avocados.
Any time you eat a hass avocado, you are eating from a graft of some generations from that original tree. The tree was overcome by a root disease in the mid 1990s, and dead by the turn of the century. It was chopped down within the last 10 years.
There's a house behind a gate on that property today, but the owners maintain a plaque on the spot where Hass avocados came in to existence". (Reddit OP)
