New giant Australian avocado variety a guacamole lover’s dream

A plant producing a supersized new Australian avocado variety — four times the size of a store-bought fruit — is tipped to be a sell-out, ahead of its first release to retail nurseries and home gardeners.

Lorna Spackman married into a pioneering citrus farming family on the Sunshine Coast.

But the 81-year-old never expected to create a legacy with Jala, a prolific new avocado variety producing enormous slow-oxidising fruit.

Avocados from grafted Jala trees recently weighed in at an average of 1–1.2 kilograms, while fruit from the first trial in Ms Spackman’s orchard averaged between 700 and 900 grams.

“I need both hands to pick them,” the retiree laughed.

“They’re attractive looking, they’re thick-skinned, the seed is not so big in comparison, the flesh is very solid.”

Settling in Palmwoods in 1906, the Spackman family was among the first farmers in the region to grow citrus, which were sent south to cities by steam train.

Around 30 years ago, Ms Spackman’s late husband Ken saved a seed from an avocado tree of mystery origins, before clearing paddocks on their farm at Palmwoods.

His wise decision to grow a tree from that seed made horticultural history after he died.

“Some more seedlings grew under that, and one tree produced extra special fruit, which I gave to my neighbour [John Mongan] to try and he absolutely loved it,” Ms Spackman said.

The friends joined forces to plant more of the trees, and received positive feedback after sending some of their big, buttery fleshed fruit to the Brisbane Markets.

They established an official trial plot, planting Jala beside other big avocado varieties, including the aptly named Avozilla from South Africa, and the large Choquette avocado from South Florida.

Ms Spackman said the trial proved their trees had features distinct enough to warrant registering a new variety.

“The number of fruit on the tree, the size, the flavour, the fact that it didn’t oxidise quickly,” she said.

The history of avocados

Pebbly-skinned, pear-shaped avocados, which often hang in pairs, were once regarded as an aphrodisiac.

Named āhuacatl by the ancient Aztecs, the trees were first domesticated in Central and South America more than 5,000 years ago. 

But when āhuacatl began being farmed commercially in the United States, the name was hard to pronounce and market.

In 1915 Californian growers officially gathered, deciding on a name change and informing dictionary publishers that āhuacatl were to be called avocados.

Popular fruit

A popular crop down under, avocados are grown year-round in states including Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

They are a natural source of vitamins C, E, K and B6, and beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, which can help people feel fuller between meals. 

The Australian Horticulture Statistics Handbook showed that in 2022-23, 65 per cent of Australian households purchased avocados, buying an average of 537g per shopping trip.

In that financial year, the wholesale value of the fresh avocado supply was $618.8 million in 2022-23, with $470 million’s worth distributed into retail and $148.8 million into food service.

Ms Spackman said the large Jala fruit cut down on labour by being quicker to process and was less likely to go to waste because of browning.

She and her neighbour teamed up with a wholesale nursery at Woombye, which is now the licensed propagator.

Flemings Nursery won the best new product with its grafted Jala trees at the recent Greenlife/Nursery and Garden Industry Queensland conference.

Manager Jess Fleming said Jala trees grew up to about 10 metres tall, depending on soil type and environmental conditions, and had great potential for home gardens because they “yield well and easily”.

So far the new variety has only been grown on the Sunshine Coast, but Ms Fleming hoped to test its geographical limits by trialling it on farms interstate next year.

The 4th generation nursery woman said that pre-orders had almost sold out for their first release of 1,000 trees to a national hardware chain and selected nurseries in south-east Queensland and north Queensland in mid-September.

A second release is planned for November/December, with supply to expand in autumn and spring next year. 

Although some Jala fruit has been sent to the Brisbane markets, seasonal supply has been limited to the small number of mature trees in trial orchards.

Ms Fleming said for the fruit itself to be commercially viable as a product, trials to see how well it stored and handled during transport would be required.

“When we talk about commercialisation of a product into supermarkets there’s a lot more testing … involved,” she said.

Large and lucky

Ms Fleming said growing a successful new variety from seed, was “very unusual”.

“When you plant an avocado from seed the likelihood of that tree producing delicious edible fruit is very, very slim,” she said.

“A lot of the time the fruit that will come up might be bitter, they might be flavourless, they might be overly watery.

“It really is just luck.”

Building a legacy

Asked how she liked to eat them, Ms Spackman described her version of “guacamole on toast” using home-made tomato relish.

She said her friends enjoyed sprinkling lemon and black pepper on it.

“But you can do your own thing, it’s very versatile — you can even make cheesecake,” she said.

Ms Spackman said the buzz of breeding such a big tasty new variety was exciting.

“It’s quite a thrill, I like the history of it, it’s something that is not done every day,” she said.

“It will be our legacy.”