Oct 8, 2026, 8:22 AMThese Australian farmers accidentally grew huge avocados | Landline
The most famous avocado variety in the world is 'Hass' and it was also a chance seedling. There are still fruits in the world that were not specifically bred, but just came up from a seed no one was paying attention to at the time.
IMO, it would be worth planting more and more seedlings to see what comes up but the price of land is at such a premium that breeding programs are constantly cutting back.
Oct 8, 2026, 8:33 AMThere's a lot of diversity in avocados. Most consumers never see it because modern produce distribution and marketing doesn't want to handle that many different varieties.
There have been giant avocados before. The noteworthy thing here is that they're saying it has other qualities you'd want in a fruit you can mass market.
#FruitToot #Horticulture #PlantBreeding
@ml That's one of the nice things about grocery shopping in Latin America. Most produce markets will have several varieties of avocado to choose from, bananas too! It's too bad most of the world never gets to experience that diversity.
@ml is it land though? Or is it a lack of interest in funding the people to do the actual work? Here in Wisconsin, which is a great place to grow root vegetables, there is exactly one professor doing root vegetable development. (Their lab came up with the Badger Flame, a very delicious beet that grows great in WI!)
Oct 8, 2026, 10:23 AM@jimkreft It's definitely more than one thing that's to blame.
But you cannot grow lots of tree fruit seedlings for long enough to test without holding onto the land and both governments and universities have given up more & more of that land (while also charging researchers more & more internally to use it). The land isn't just needed for testing but germplasm conservation.
My expertise is in tree fruit & nuts so I don't know how the land requirements of field crops would compare.