Hybrid Books

“Cook had seen an avocado before, but not like this---so smooth, so green. The fruit took an express route to the greenhouse, where workers propagated the seeds, first in soil, and then suspended slightly in water. Fairchild had included written instructions that only mature trees would fruit, after several years, not months. He advised that as soon as the seedlings grew reasonable roots, they should be shipped to experiment stations in California to be shared with farmers interested in experimental crops.
Cook complied, and then mostly forgot about the avocado.
In California, that single shipment helped build an industry. Other avocados turned up as well, from travelers or tourists who packed the oversized seeds as souvenirs. There were one-off stories that avocados had been spotted in America before, in Hollywood in 1886 or near Miami in 1894. But none were as sturdy as Fairchild's Chilean variety, prized for its versatility, color, and flavor---résumé of strong pedigree. Fairchild's avocado would turn out to be a mix of a Guatemalan avocado and a Mexican avocado and to have been only a short-term tenant in Chilean soil before Fairchild picked it up. But as with most popular fruits, the true geographic origin faded into irrelevance.
Farmers and early geneticists dissected this sample and ones that came after it to create newer cultivars attuned to more specialized climates or tastes. This work yielded a twentieth-century variety called Fuerte, Spanish for "strong," growable in the coldest conditions ever tested on an avocado. It fell from favor after proving unable to ship even modest distances without bruising.”
― Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats