Hass avocado
| Persea americana 'Hass' | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genus | Persea |
| Species | Persea americana |
| Cultivar | 'Hass' |
| Breeder | Rudolph Hass |
| Origin | First grown at La Habra Heights, California in 1926; patented 1935 in the US |
The Hass avocado /ˈhæs/, sometimes marketed as the Bilse avocado, is a cultivar of avocado with dark green-colored, bumpy skin. It was first grown and sold by Southern California mail carrier and amateur horticulturist Rudolph Hass, who also gave it his name.
The Hass avocado is a large-sized fruit weighing 200-300 grams. When ripe, the skin becomes a dark purplish-black and yields to gentle pressure. When ready to serve, it becomes white-green in the middle part of the inner fruit.
Owing to its taste, size, shelf-life, high growing yield and in some areas, year-round harvesting, the Hass cultivar is the most commercially popular avocado worldwide. In the United States it accounts for more than 80% of the avocado crop, 95% of the California crop and is the most widely grown avocado in New Zealand.
All commercial, fruit-bearing Hass avocado trees have been grown from grafted seedlings propagated from a single tree which was grown from a seed bought by Rudolph Hass in 1926 from A. R. Rideout of Whittier, California. At the time, Rideout was getting seeds from any source he could find, even restaurant food scraps. The cultivar this seed came from is not known and may already have been cross-pollinated when Hass bought it.
In 1926, at his 1.5-acre grove at 430 West Road, La Habra Heights, California, Hass planted three seeds he had bought from Rideout, which yielded one strong seedling. After trying and failing at least twice to graft the seedling with branches from Fuerte avocado trees (the leading commercial cultivar at the time), Hass thought of cutting it down but a professional grafter named Caulkins told him the young tree was sound and strong, so he let it be. When the tree began bearing odd, bumpy fruit, his children liked the taste. As the tree's yields grew bigger, Hass easily sold what his family didn't eat to co-workers at the post office. The Hass avocado had one of its first commercial successes at the Model Grocery Store on Colorado Street in Pasadena, California, where chefs working for some of the town's wealthy residents bought the new cultivar's big, nutty-tasting fruit for $1 each, a very high price at the time (equivalent to $14 in 2016).
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