1 in 3 95% of avocados consumed today are Hass varieties — Photo: Getty Images/Via BBC 95% of avocados consumed today are Hass varieties — Photo: Getty Images/Via BBC
When Rudolph Hass wanted to dig up the ground to remove the small avocado tree he had planted in his garden because it was useless, they persuaded him not to do it.
It was the late 1920s when he arrived in Pasadena, just outside of Los Angeles, in September 1923 with his wife Elizabeth and their 18monthold daughter Betty. Part of the family, already settled in the area, encouraged her to move to the region.
They covered 3,300 kilometers from their home in Milwaukee in the northern United States in a circuitous drive in an old Ford T that Rudolph bought from a colleague in 1920 for $75 and which made it into the Southwest without a rear bumper and a flat tire.
In California, Rudie, as he was known, first got a job at a fruit and vegetable stand, then he was a salesman for a manufacturer of socks, underwear and accessories. He also sold washing machines and vacuum cleaners until he was hired as a mailman for the Pasadena Post Office.
According to his wife’s records, this happened in 1926. However, the text with this date was written decades later and other dates contained therein do not exactly match the documents proving the employment relationship.
a money tree
One day, while Rudie was delivering mail, he saw an advertisement in a magazine for a lot of avocado trees, which, according to Elizabeth’s version, had dollar bills hanging on them.
Hass avocado historian Gina Rose Kimball believes the ad featured a bag with a dollar symbol and one of those fruits on the side, rather than a money tree.
California, which had no avocado plantations while it was Mexican territory, tentatively began growing them when three seedlings brought from Mexico were planted in Santa Barbara in the 1870s; Half a century later, the avocado tree was advertised as a promising business in the state.
Rudie loved it, and when he was able to sell a piece of property near Milwaukee, he took the money, borrowed some more from a sister, and went to the Los Angeles office of the businessman who had placed the ad.
2 of 3 Rudolph Hass and his wife Elizabeth in front of the Hass avocado mother tree. They met in a church in 1918 and married the following year when he was 27 and she was 19 — Photo: Hass Family/Via BBC Rudolph Hass and his wife Elizabeth in front of the Hass avocado mother tree. They met in a church in 1918 and married the following year when he was 27 and she was 19 Photo: Hass family / Via BBC
It was Edwin Hart who got to know the avocado in Mexico at the end of the 19th century and in 1919 bought the approximately 1,500 hectare La Habra farm on the outskirts of Los Angeles and not far from Pasadena in order to plant this fruit and then sell the land.
Rudie bought a 7,800squarefoot lot that already had a few avocado trees in this rural area, then renamed La Habra Heights. He agreed to pay $3,800 in quarterly installments. The initial deposit was $760.
“When he bought it, he wanted to grow another strain, possibly Lyon,” says Kimball. This is a Guatemalan strain tall and hardskinned that a man named Lyon planted in Hollywood in the early 1900s and looked most promising in its early years. Back then, it was common in California for avocado plantation owners to add their last name to each new variety of the fruit.
At the time Rudolph started the business, the most common variety was the Fuerte, so named because it survived a severe freeze in California in 1913. A Mexican variety, this avocado is characterized by a soft, smooth skin that’s easy to peel.
Gardener Albert Rideout then had a nursery specializing in avocados near La Habra Heights. Every avocado seed he found, wherever he went, he planted in search of new varieties.
Rudie went to this nursery and bought a bag of a Guatemalan avocado, which unlike the Mexican one has a hard skin.
3 of 3 In California, Hass avocado has one harvest per year, but in Mexico four, guaranteeing a yearround supply — Photo: Getty Images/Via BBC In California, Hass avocado has one harvest per year, but in Mexico they are four, guaranteeing yearround supply — Photo: Getty Images/Via BBC
failed attempts
Back in his garden, Rudie took crates of apples, filled them with sawdust and planted the seeds. He watered and watered them until they germinated, and when the stalks were pencilthick, just over half an inch, he stuck them in the ground and protected them with cardboard.
Then, with the help of an expert named Caulkins, he used these new plants to graft shoots from the avocado trees of Fuerte and Lyon.
This technique is used to reproduce plants, but it doesn’t mean creating a mix of the new and the old; genetic mixtures are formed through pollination. Rather, this method attempts to grow new trees of the seed variety. In the case of Rudolph Hass, he wanted new trees from Fort and Lyon.
But one of the new plants refused to receive these transplants. Tried once, failed. A second time nothing. For each new attempt, they had to wait for the season in which they were to be performed. On the third failed attempt, Rudie became tired and wanted to remove the new tree from his yard.
Caulkins suggested not killing her but leaving her there.
Evil looking avocados
In 1931, this plant produced its first six avocados. For the following year it was 125.
They were dark on the outside, a mixture of black and purple, with rough skin and an unpleasant appearance of being rotten. This has nothing to do with the shiny green skin of the avocados they ate in California.
But her kids tried it and really liked it. They were creamy on the inside, rich in oil and of good consistency not stringy. It was there that Rudie saw the commercial side of food.
“Rudolph not only worked fulltime, but was also a salesman. He sent his children to the corner of West Road and Hacienda Road with wooden boxes to sell the avocados. He sold wherever he could: to friends, to his colleagues at the post office,” says Kimball.
At first it was difficult for him from the looks, but gradually he won over more people.
“Mr. Carter from the avocado company stopped by and encouraged Rudie to give it a try. He sent a box to Chicago, back and forth … and when he came back they were still tight,” his wife wrote in her memoir. from the family.
This excited him, because until then, avocados sent to the northeast of the country would arrive in poor condition, overripe, or with beatings that hastened their rotting.
Hass’ Legacy
In 1935 Rudie decided to patent his avocado as a new variety and gave it his last name. He then teamed up with Brokaw, Rideout’s uncle with large plantations in the area, to expand production of the Hass.
It wasn’t a big deal. By August 1952, when the patent rights expired, Rudie had made only about $4,800.
“The name stuck, but the money never came,” says Jeff Hass, one of his grandchildren.
In June 1952, he retired from his postal job, and in honor of over a quarter century as an employee, the Pasadena Post Office announced that it would issue him a Certificate of Appreciation.
The certificate came in November of that year, but Rudie had died of a heart attack a month earlier.
Today, the variety makes up 95 percent of the world’s avocados, according to Peter Shore, vice president of product management at Calavo, a company founded by Californian avocado growers. And it’s a multibillion dollar industry.
“There are millions and millions of Hass avocado trees, and they all came from this original tree,” Shore says.
Rudie believed that his Hass avocado was Guatemalantype, but a study of its genome published in 2019 confirmed that this fruit’s origin is 61% Mexican and 39% Guatemalan.
“The Mexican genes allow Hass to mature earlier than pure Guatemalan varieties and give the tree and fruit more cold tolerance, although not as much as the pure Mexican variety. The Guatemalan genes give the fruit a thicker skin, but thin enough to peel easily,” notes the book Avocado Production in California, A Cultural Handbook for Growers, a grower’s handbook published by the University of California and the California Society of Avocado Growers.
The mother tree became ill and had to be felled in 2002.