“The world wants Hass,” a man in the avocado business once told me. Yes, it does. If the explosive growth in the avocado industry can be explained in a single word, it is Hass.
For this reason, I’m somewhat skeptical about Luna UCR, a new avocado variety that has been released by the University of California at Riverside.
The Luna UCR is a great-grandchild of the Hass, its grandmother being the Thille variety and its mother, the Gwen.
The Luna has “a rind that turns a tell-tale black when ripe, and high postharvest quality. Growers, meanwhile, will benefit from a smaller tree size, allowing denser plantings for more efficient and safer harvesting, and minimal pruning.
“It also has a type of flower that makes it an efficient pollinizer for various avocado varieties, including the stalwart Hass, the world’s leading variety. Planting the Luna UCR intermingled with other varieties could help ensure good yields by increasing pollination rates.”
The university’s press release touts the new variety’s many advantages, although it doesn’t exactly emphasize flavor, except to say that it has “great flavor.”
Unlike the Hass, the Luna has skin that’s green when it’s immature and black when it’s ripe. So, consumers can easily tell the difference.
That’s all well and good, but ancestry notwithstanding, the Luna is not going to succeed unless it is at least as desirable in flavor and texture as the Hass. And “Hass-like” and “Hass” are not the same thing.
The UCR press release refers to the Fuerte, a green-skinned variety that was sold in grocery stores until it was displaced by the Hass. We are told that despite its “excellent flavor,” the Fuerte fell into disfavor because it was alternate bearing.
Speaking from my memories as a California shopper in those days, I recollect that this occurred in the eighties. Also speaking from my experience, I can say that I replaced the Fuerte with the Hass in my shopping cart because I thought the Haas tasted a lot better than the Fuerte.
Which is why I’m harping on flavor. It is flavor that will make the Luna or any other of the newer varieties—and Hass is the touchstone. The UCR release tacitly admits that unripe green skin that turns black when ripe isn’t necessarily an advantage. After all, the Gwen avocado—momma to the Luna—was a commercial flop, “because the black-skinned Hass had made it after all.”
It gets worse. I as a shopper am conditioned to the black-skinned Hass. Without intending any disrespect to green-skinned varieties, the ones I have tried just don’t have the rich flavor or texture of the Hass.
I could easily see consumers mistaking the (presumably Hass-like) Luna for green-skinned varieties, which, except in certain specialized markets, are less desirable.
The Luna UCR then, would, like the Gwen, be solving a problem that doesn’t need to be solved, and the green skin would prove to be a detriment.
The Luna may have certain horticultural advantages, which are all well and good, but unless it tastes as good as the Hass or better, it’s not likely to have much of a future.
