Interesting for size.
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Those dont look that much bigger than a “Florida” avocado. I always thought we switched to the small avocados because the big ones taste awful to most people. 1.8kg is massive though.
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it is the lovechild of two avocado species: the West Indian and the Guatemalan
Not even close to correct… those are not even subspecies of avocado, they are just botanical groups (or “races”). This is not an interspecies variety, just a hybrid of two races. Most cultivars are hybrids, including Hass itself.
And yeah that looks smaller than some of the biggest varieties. Check out Marcus Pumpkin for a real giant (mediocre flavor):
Miami Fruit never fails to completely shock me with their astronomical prices. $97 PLUS SHIPPING for a SINGLE AVOCADO?? and one that doesn’t even taste very good.
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When you get down to brass tacks, the definition of a species becomes a problem. For example, a “species” can be defined as a geographically and/or temporally isolated organism (meaning all of that group) which develops genetic barriers to reproduction with close relatives. By this definition, any genome which has not developed genetic barriers can be defined as a single species. An example is western honeybees which have over 30 defined races but all are considered the same species. However, Apis Cerana - the eastern honeybee - is incapable of breeding with western honeybees therefore the two are defined as separate species. This definition gets into problems with several plant species which can be clearly differentiated from close relatives yet are still capable of reproducing with those species. Tomato is an excellent example with 15 defined species in 3 clades where all species can be crossed with domestic tomato under some set of conditions. For example, galapagos tomatoes (2 species) can easily cross with domestic tomatoes and have resulted in numerous varieties grown today. Caro Rich is one example. Solanum habrochaites is another very interesting tomato species which can cross in one direction with domestic tomato.
So I guess I’m questioning the definition of two “races” being defined as a single species. What are the differences between Guatemalan and Indian avocados?
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I think its important to clarify that its West Indian and not Indian. I think the clarification helps because they aren’t the same species world’s apart, but rather two groups slightly isolated by water (since avocado pits float, it wouldn’ be wild to assume that they spread in the area by floating from location to location like coconuts). Avocados in India were brought over from the Americas, so they are the same species.
I think the issue here is they are using Guatemalan and West Indian like they are specific varieties, when in actuality they aren’t. To use tomatoes as an example, they basically said “we crossed a tomato from California with a tomato from Florida”. That doesn’t really tell you anything because there is hundreds of different varieties at those locations that vary greatly in taste and texture.
Actually not even water! The race is misnamed and actually originated in Central America, wasn’t spread into the islands until after European contact.
There are three botanical races of avocado:
- Mexican
- Usually small fruit, very thin skin, strongly scented leaves. Fruit ripen in less than one year.
- Guatemalan
- Thick, bumpy skin, good flavor and oil content, no leaf scent. Fruit take more than a year to ripen.
- West Indian (some people have suggested the more accurate name “Lowland”)
- Large fruit size with smooth, thick skin. No leaf scent. Low oil content (watery).
The Guatemalan and WI races are entirely the product of human selection following a bottleneck when they were first brought away from the Mexican highlands thousands of years ago by people. The Guatemalan race is mostly from the western lowlands of Mexico and Central America, the WI is from the eastern southern lowlands of Mexico and Central America.
The Mexican race is still mostly in that ancestral location of the species (northern highlands of Mexico), but has also been strongly selected by humans for thousands of years, though there are still some wild/unimproved specimens in some of the forests there. The pre-domesticated fruit looks like a golf ball basically.
Here’s a paper with some interesting information, I especially love the detailed photos:
CapituloAguacate2015.pdf (1.6 MB)
From that paper, this is what they hypothesize avocados looked like before people started domesticating them. This is a tree they call “El Salto” after the park where it was found growing wild:
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Then there is a single species and I would argue no races at all. All I see is several human selections resulting in unique offspring originating from the parent species.
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Usually “race” when used in this context means the same thing as “landrace,” i.e., humans have selected a particular set of traits in a breeding population in some geographic area isolated from the rest of the species for a long time. That’s what these three populations represent.
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You have a different definition of “race” than I do which does not mean I am right or that you are wrong. I can see how this would work if we defined it as a cross between two different “selections”.
Either way, I can see some possibilities in an avocado 4X the size of current varieties in the market.