Proc. of
Avocado Breeding in
Emanuel Lahav, Uri Lavi, and Chemda Degani
Agricultural Research Organization, The
Shmuel Gazit
Faculty of Agriculture,
Abstract. The breeding project is aimed at producing new
cultivars that significantly outperform present commercial cultivars harvested
in the same season. Our ideal is a high-producer under Israeli growing
conditions, with high-quality fruit of medium size, a small seed, and high
export quality.
The project is based on caged trees with
bees as the pollination vector. Most of the cages contain a tree of each of two
cultivars, thus reciprocals of each cross are obtained. The hybrids are
differentiated from selfs by the use of isozyme
genetic markers. So far about 150 crosses have been made with about 25,000
seedlings. The parents include such old and new commercial cultivars as: ‘Fuerte’,
‘Benik’, 'Hass', 'Pinkerton', 'Sharwil',
'Tova', 'Ettinger', and 'Horshim'. These are crossed among themselves and also with
highly productive cultivars such as 'Regina', 'Reed', and 'Anaheim'; cultivars
with large fruit such as 'Nabal'; cultivars with
precocity such as 'Santana', 'Yama A', and 'Rosh Hanikra 4'; and selections with other desirable traits such
as 'Bnei Darom'.
The first named selection from this
project, 'Iriet', was released recently. It is an
outcross of 'Hass'. The tree is medium-small with pear-shaped glossy fruit that
weighs 300 to 500 g. It has an excellent nut-like flavor and a very small seed.
It is harvested from mid-winter to the following mid-summer in