Landscape Industry Council of Hawai’iP. O. Box 22938 Honolulu HI 96823-2938

A l b i z i A i s s u eLandscape Industry Council of Hawai’iP. O. Box 22938 Honolulu HI 96823-2938

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28 LANDSCAPE HAWAII NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2014

For those of you who may have perused some of my previous articles, you’ll know I strive to introduce my readers to rare and uncommon tropical fruits. So what am I doing writing about avocado, likely one of the commonest fruits in Hawaii? Because for as familiar as avocados are (ranking right up there with Mango as one of the most ubiquitous backyard trees in the Islands), I continue to be amazed at how difficult it can be to find a qual-ity, locally grown variety of avocado. And I don’t just mean a good avocado that you happen to pickup by chance, I mean a named variety; a cultivar that has been intentionally selected, named and perpetuated, just like with any other fruit. When I first moved to Oahu in 2007 I was stunned to find Californian avocados for sale in the grocery stores. With avocado trees in every backyard, how could we be importing so much, and at what incred-ible cost? Over the last couple years it seems to have become more common to find local avocados in select grocers trying to cater to the increasing demand for local produce, but its usually many dif-ferent types mixed together and labeled “local Avocado.” You ever go to the store and find a bin of apples with all different shapes and colors mixed in together, and some generic sign saying simply “Apples”? Of course not, that would be silly because apples are so variable in taste, texture, etc.

Additionally, avocados have a flowering characteristic that promotes out-crossing, aka mixing of genetic material. Due to the huge economic importance of the crop (particularly in California and Mexico) this has been studied extensively. Avocado flowers are perfect, meaning they contain both functional male and female parts, but they typically don’t pollinate them-selves because the male and female parts of the flowers mature at different times. Broadly, the flowering of avocados has been divided into A and B types, with one type being male phase in the morning, female in the afternoon, and the other type opposite. To achieve good fruit set you need to have both A and B types close enough for pollinators such as bees to carry the pollen from male phase flowers of one type to the female phase flowers of the other type. Sounds complicated, but most backyard avocado growers in Hawaii don’t have to worry about this because there are so many different trees planted in neighborhoods across the State, well within the range of a honeybee. However, if you’re planning an orchard, or if you just live really far from anyone else, be sure to select your varieties accordingly and include both A and B types.

As mentioned earlier, Hawaii is home to an incredible diversity of avocados. Their introduction to the Isles is usually attributed to Don Francisco de Paula Marin, the colorful advisor and consul to Kamehameha I, who is also credited with cultivating the first pineapple, cotton, and mango in Hawaii, as well as famously establishing the first grape vineyard where Vineyard Street is now located in downtown Honolulu. If he did introduce it, as seems likely based on his penchant for cultivating food plants of all types brought by visit-ing ships, that would have been more than 200 years ago. Since that time uncount-ed visitors, particu-larly in the early years of foreign settlement, would have

(Personally, there’s only two varieties of apples I buy: ‘Fuji’ and ‘Honeycrisp.’ But ‘Gala’, ‘Red Delicious,’ or ‘Granny Smith,’ no thank you.) Fortunately I don’t have to dig through a bin of unlabeled random apples and try and guess if I’m getting a good one. Yet somehow that’s become an acceptable practice in many Hawaii grocery stores and farmer’s markets when it comes to local Avocados.

Now I want to support local agriculture just as much as the next person, I even have a faded bumper sticker on the back of my car that proudly proclaims it, but its tough to gamble on an unnamed mixed bin local avocado when I can choose a tried and true Californian ‘Hass’ for the same price or sometimes cheaper. Let’s face it, avocados are an extremely variable fruit in just about every respect: skin color and thickness, fruit size and shape, flesh consistency, stringiness, grittiness, seed size, oil content, etc. So when I reluc-tantly choose an unnamed local avocado (from a bin that looks like someone went door to door in the neighborhood asking for avo donations) for $2+/lb because I want to support local agriculture, take it home and stare at it every day for half a week or more waiting for it to ripen, I am pretty disappointed to finally cut it open if I find a giant seed, strings in the flesh, and a weak insipid watery flavor. I’m extra disappointed because I am no longer a

introduced and planted seeds from avocados eaten on the ship ride over here. For anyone who’s ever tried, you know how easy it is to grow an avocado from seed, especially in Hawaii. They grow like weeds here and can even be seen thriving in many natural areas of Hawaii, espe-cially along popular trails and roadsides (don’t throw your seeds!), in addition to backyards and gardens. But with its out-crossing pollination syndrome, and a naturally high amount of genetic diver-sity, planting an avocado from seed will guarantee you anything but consistency. In other words, just like many fruit trees, avocados do not “come true” from seed. To perpetuate a good avocado, you have to vegetatively propagate it, usually by grafting. But for better or worse, many of the backyard trees throughout the State are seedlings of uncertain quality and widely varying characters; the end result of two centuries of random mixing and unplanned crosses from a hugely diverse gene pool.

Starting around the turn of the last century Hawaii Agricultural Experi-mental Stations, and later University of Hawaii horticulturalists, began importing selected cultivars (grafted varieties) from other avocado growing regions, conduct-ing seedling trials, and holding contests to find high quality local seedlings. The result: literally hundreds of different selected cultivars are grown in Hawaii, some hailing from foreign lands, many others uniquely Hawaiian. The Kona coffee belt has long been known as a great place to grow avocados, and today still

accounts for the majority of acreage planted

to avocados. A long his-

tory of Japa-

Hawaiian avocado naïf; I have tasted the richness of the islands’ avos and can tell you from personal experience that Hawaii is home to some of the finest avocado varieties anywhere, if you can find them. Which is why to have such delicious lo-cal potential misrepresented by poorly selected seedlings in the major market places is so bitterly frustrating.

Avocados (Persea americana) originated in Mesoamerica, domesticated by the indigenous peoples of the region perhaps as earlier as 10,000 BCE, making it one of the oldest domesticated crops in the world. In pre-Hispanic times people had spread the fruit well into South America, and in the centuries since Spanish contact it has reached every tropical region of the globe suitable for its cultivation. The name in English comes from Span-ish aguacate, which in turn comes from Nahuatl (one of the indigenous Mexican languages). Within their native range, avocados are segregated into three land races: Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian. Each has certain traits and char-acteristics that are typical of it (e.g. skin thickness, cold hardiness, oil content) but most modern selections have hybrid origins between two or all three of the races, which can make it difficult to say with certainty which race any particular variety might be, at least for those of us who aren’t true connoisseurs.

nese farmers from the region, and their keen eye for superior selections, is evidenced in the names of some of the local cultivars: ‘Nishikawa,’ ‘Yamagata,’ ‘Murashige,’ ‘Hashimoto,’ ‘Ohata,’ ‘Fuji-kawa,’ ‘Nogami,’ ‘Morimoto.’ Others are unmistakably Hawaiian: ‘Leahi,’ ‘Malama,’ ‘Kahalu‘u,’ ‘Healani,’ ‘Hulumanu,’ ‘Ilialu,’ ‘Wahiawa,’ ‘Wainaku.’ Yet other varieties have been selected abroad but proven themselves in Hawaii over the years: ‘San Miguel,’ ‘Sharwil,’ and ‘Linda,’ just to name a few.

Yet with all this wonderful variety of truly excellent avocados in Hawaii, most grocers are still stocking Californian (and Mexican and Chilean) avocados. As an industry outsider (but a fruit enthusiast!), I wanted to know one simple thing: why aren’t the high quality Hawaiian avoca-dos more widely available? I’ve been told that my experience in the grocery stores and farmer’s markets of Oahu and Kauai may not represent the situation in Kona, where named local varieties can readily be found, but certainly the majority of the State’s population could sympathize with this conundrum. The problem is not a simple one though, rather a series of factors that have combined to keep me from being able to easily purchase a fine Hawaiian avocado whenever I’m in the mood. Firstly, avocado production is far from the only area of the State’s food production that has been severely limited in one way or another by the last century and half of an export-based economy centered around sugar and pineapple. But tropical fruits in particular have faced some unique challenges in Hawaii, namely the introduction of several species of fruit flies that have dashed the possibil-ity of export to the US mainland. As early as 1916, J.E. Higgins presented to the Cali-fornia Avocado Association saying “The

avocado was by this time attracting consider-

thE VOiCE OF hAWAii’S GREEN iNDUStRY HAWAIISCAPE.Com 29

28 LANDSCAPE HAWAII NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2014

For those of you who may have perused some of my previous articles, you’ll know I strive to introduce my readers to rare and uncommon tropical fruits. So what am I doing writing about avocado, likely one of the commonest fruits in Hawaii? Because for as familiar as avocados are (ranking right up there with Mango as one of the most ubiquitous backyard trees in the Islands), I continue to be amazed at how difficult it can be to find a qual-ity, locally grown variety of avocado. And I don’t just mean a good avocado that you happen to pickup by chance, I mean a named variety; a cultivar that has been intentionally selected, named and perpetuated, just like with any other fruit. When I first moved to Oahu in 2007 I was stunned to find Californian avocados for sale in the grocery stores. With avocado trees in every backyard, how could we be importing so much, and at what incred-ible cost? Over the last couple years it seems to have become more common to find local avocados in select grocers trying to cater to the increasing demand for local produce, but its usually many dif-ferent types mixed together and labeled “local Avocado.” You ever go to the store and find a bin of apples with all different shapes and colors mixed in together, and some generic sign saying simply “Apples”? Of course not, that would be silly because apples are so variable in taste, texture, etc.

Additionally, avocados have a flowering characteristic that promotes out-crossing, aka mixing of genetic material. Due to the huge economic importance of the crop (particularly in California and Mexico) this has been studied extensively. Avocado flowers are perfect, meaning they contain both functional male and female parts, but they typically don’t pollinate them-selves because the male and female parts of the flowers mature at different times. Broadly, the flowering of avocados has been divided into A and B types, with one type being male phase in the morning, female in the afternoon, and the other type opposite. To achieve good fruit set you need to have both A and B types close enough for pollinators such as bees to carry the pollen from male phase flowers of one type to the female phase flowers of the other type. Sounds complicated, but most backyard avocado growers in Hawaii don’t have to worry about this because there are so many different trees planted in neighborhoods across the State, well within the range of a honeybee. However, if you’re planning an orchard, or if you just live really far from anyone else, be sure to select your varieties accordingly and include both A and B types.

As mentioned earlier, Hawaii is home to an incredible diversity of avocados. Their introduction to the Isles is usually attributed to Don Francisco de Paula Marin, the colorful advisor and consul to Kamehameha I, who is also credited with cultivating the first pineapple, cotton, and mango in Hawaii, as well as famously establishing the first grape vineyard where Vineyard Street is now located in downtown Honolulu. If he did introduce it, as seems likely based on his penchant for cultivating food plants of all types brought by visit-ing ships, that would have been more than 200 years ago. Since that time uncount-ed visitors, particu-larly in the early years of foreign settlement, would have

(Personally, there’s only two varieties of apples I buy: ‘Fuji’ and ‘Honeycrisp.’ But ‘Gala’, ‘Red Delicious,’ or ‘Granny Smith,’ no thank you.) Fortunately I don’t have to dig through a bin of unlabeled random apples and try and guess if I’m getting a good one. Yet somehow that’s become an acceptable practice in many Hawaii grocery stores and farmer’s markets when it comes to local Avocados.

Now I want to support local agriculture just as much as the next person, I even have a faded bumper sticker on the back of my car that proudly proclaims it, but its tough to gamble on an unnamed mixed bin local avocado when I can choose a tried and true Californian ‘Hass’ for the same price or sometimes cheaper. Let’s face it, avocados are an extremely variable fruit in just about every respect: skin color and thickness, fruit size and shape, flesh consistency, stringiness, grittiness, seed size, oil content, etc. So when I reluc-tantly choose an unnamed local avocado (from a bin that looks like someone went door to door in the neighborhood asking for avo donations) for $2+/lb because I want to support local agriculture, take it home and stare at it every day for half a week or more waiting for it to ripen, I am pretty disappointed to finally cut it open if I find a giant seed, strings in the flesh, and a weak insipid watery flavor. I’m extra disappointed because I am no longer a

introduced and planted seeds from avocados eaten on the ship ride over here. For anyone who’s ever tried, you know how easy it is to grow an avocado from seed, especially in Hawaii. They grow like weeds here and can even be seen thriving in many natural areas of Hawaii, espe-cially along popular trails and roadsides (don’t throw your seeds!), in addition to backyards and gardens. But with its out-crossing pollination syndrome, and a naturally high amount of genetic diver-sity, planting an avocado from seed will guarantee you anything but consistency. In other words, just like many fruit trees, avocados do not “come true” from seed. To perpetuate a good avocado, you have to vegetatively propagate it, usually by grafting. But for better or worse, many of the backyard trees throughout the State are seedlings of uncertain quality and widely varying characters; the end result of two centuries of random mixing and unplanned crosses from a hugely diverse gene pool.

Starting around the turn of the last century Hawaii Agricultural Experi-mental Stations, and later University of Hawaii horticulturalists, began importing selected cultivars (grafted varieties) from other avocado growing regions, conduct-ing seedling trials, and holding contests to find high quality local seedlings. The result: literally hundreds of different selected cultivars are grown in Hawaii, some hailing from foreign lands, many others uniquely Hawaiian. The Kona coffee belt has long been known as a great place to grow avocados, and today still

accounts for the majority of acreage planted

to avocados. A long his-

tory of Japa-

Hawaiian avocado naïf; I have tasted the richness of the islands’ avos and can tell you from personal experience that Hawaii is home to some of the finest avocado varieties anywhere, if you can find them. Which is why to have such delicious lo-cal potential misrepresented by poorly selected seedlings in the major market places is so bitterly frustrating.

Avocados (Persea americana) originated in Mesoamerica, domesticated by the indigenous peoples of the region perhaps as earlier as 10,000 BCE, making it one of the oldest domesticated crops in the world. In pre-Hispanic times people had spread the fruit well into South America, and in the centuries since Spanish contact it has reached every tropical region of the globe suitable for its cultivation. The name in English comes from Span-ish aguacate, which in turn comes from Nahuatl (one of the indigenous Mexican languages). Within their native range, avocados are segregated into three land races: Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian. Each has certain traits and char-acteristics that are typical of it (e.g. skin thickness, cold hardiness, oil content) but most modern selections have hybrid origins between two or all three of the races, which can make it difficult to say with certainty which race any particular variety might be, at least for those of us who aren’t true connoisseurs.

nese farmers from the region, and their keen eye for superior selections, is evidenced in the names of some of the local cultivars: ‘Nishikawa,’ ‘Yamagata,’ ‘Murashige,’ ‘Hashimoto,’ ‘Ohata,’ ‘Fuji-kawa,’ ‘Nogami,’ ‘Morimoto.’ Others are unmistakably Hawaiian: ‘Leahi,’ ‘Malama,’ ‘Kahalu‘u,’ ‘Healani,’ ‘Hulumanu,’ ‘Ilialu,’ ‘Wahiawa,’ ‘Wainaku.’ Yet other varieties have been selected abroad but proven themselves in Hawaii over the years: ‘San Miguel,’ ‘Sharwil,’ and ‘Linda,’ just to name a few.

Yet with all this wonderful variety of truly excellent avocados in Hawaii, most grocers are still stocking Californian (and Mexican and Chilean) avocados. As an industry outsider (but a fruit enthusiast!), I wanted to know one simple thing: why aren’t the high quality Hawaiian avoca-dos more widely available? I’ve been told that my experience in the grocery stores and farmer’s markets of Oahu and Kauai may not represent the situation in Kona, where named local varieties can readily be found, but certainly the majority of the State’s population could sympathize with this conundrum. The problem is not a simple one though, rather a series of factors that have combined to keep me from being able to easily purchase a fine Hawaiian avocado whenever I’m in the mood. Firstly, avocado production is far from the only area of the State’s food production that has been severely limited in one way or another by the last century and half of an export-based economy centered around sugar and pineapple. But tropical fruits in particular have faced some unique challenges in Hawaii, namely the introduction of several species of fruit flies that have dashed the possibil-ity of export to the US mainland. As early as 1916, J.E. Higgins presented to the Cali-fornia Avocado Association saying “The

avocado was by this time attracting consider-

thE VOiCE OF hAWAii’S GREEN iNDUStRY HAWAIISCAPE.Com 29