Hey @swincher,
Would you mind telling me which widely available mexican avocados are not hybrids?
Also, is it your experience that mexican avocados are less susceptible to root rot issues?
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I guess that depends on what you mean. I have not formally published the cultivar name, but it was chosen by the person who owns the ortet, who allowed @JohannsGarden to share scionwood with me. It’s a “true variety” as much as many cultivars that are shared under names that were never formally published either.
That question is a pretty tough one to answer, because the definitions of the three botanical groups (races) of avocado are a little fuzzy at the margins, so to speak. And especially for the topic of this thread (how easily they will root), I think each cultivar needs to be independently tested. Rooting ability is likely not the same for all pure Mexican cultivars.
That being said, varieties like Mexicola, Mexicola Grande, Poncho, Joey, etc., are generally considered to be “pure” Mexican avocados.
At times, people have treated Bacon, Fuerte, and Zutano as Mexican cultivars, but some (imperfect, marker-based) genetic studies suggest Bacon may be a pure Guatemalan type that just has very unusually thin skin. I suspect those three are hybrids, though, based on both phenotype and the fruit maturation time.
I have not encountered any root rot issues in my soil here, so I don’t know the answer. My soil is glacial sand & silt mostly with pretty good drainage. In-ground trees have thus far grown very well other than freeze damage.
In pots, most avocados seem to show root stress symptoms over the winter here, with the combination of constant rain and cool temperatures. I haven’t grown many other types, though, so I can’t really compare. It rarely seems to result in permanent decline, and they seem to grow out of it as soon as they go in the ground.
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Thank you for the thorough answer, sir
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According to bacon avocados, I can confirm that some of my seedlings have a bit of the typical anis odor of mexican cultivars. So they must be hybrids.
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Hmm not sure how I missed this one lol. My only Mexican variety is Stewart but it should be able to root? I will give it a try!
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I haven’t tried Stewart yet, but my graft has some really droopy branches at just the right stage now and I was planning to prune them anyhow, so I’ll give it a try too.
Here’s one of the largest cutting-grown trees I have grown so far, it was a clone of a seedling (not a named variety), and I distributed it to a project member yesterday:
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Here’s my vase of misc avocado cuttings I’ve set aside to callus, mostly from seedling rootstocks when I grafted them, but also a few named varieties that I haven’t rooted yet:
And the separate tub of Stewart cuttings & scionwood that I just cut:
Once I’ve finished getting it set up, they will go in a deep-water culture (DWC) cloner using the Steuwe D60 deepots:
The main thing left is to figure out what kind of air pump and emitters to use, and whether each pot should have its own little airstone or whether a couple in the reservoir will work well enough.
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Wow that rooted seedling cutting looks fantastic. That cloner setup is impressive as well. I was just going to stick my cuttings in a pot and see what happens 
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Not to change the subject but I finally got my first Barbie pink guava cutting to root successfully. So I’m on like a 1-30 ratio but a couple others look promising. Now I will try to root the pancho and Lila next
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Whats the difference between a DWC cloner and just sticking them in a cup of water? Does the aeration make it so you don’t have to change water as often? Is there any other differences?
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Well so far all I’ve done is stuck them in pots with humidity domes (jars) on top, but I wanted to scale it up a bit, since it’s looking like I’ll have fewer seeds to start in the project this fall than last year, so I’m hoping to make up for that with more clones instead.
The pots will be filled with a growing medium (probably just extra coarse perlite, haven’t tested it yet), so the stem will be in complete darkness. Avocado roots will not initiate on a cutting unless the stem is in darkness 24/7. Even if you leave them in cups of regularly changed water for months, the callus gets very gnarly looking but never becomes roots. So I’m hoping that is the difference! But until I try it out I can’t be sure.
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