What does avocado taste like, and where is it suitable to grow?

Avocado is a fruit that has become popular in recent years. Its skin is fairly hard, its flesh is fine and delicate, it has a relatively large pit, and its color is matcha green, making it look very fresh. However, not everyone can accept the taste of avocado. So let us take a look together at what avocado tastes like and where it is suitable to grow.

1. What does avocado taste like?

The flesh of avocado has a fine, delicate texture and a delicious flavor, resembles cheese, and has the fragrance of walnut. The method of eating it fresh is somewhat special: the fruit must be cut open into two halves, the seed, which is about the size of a tennis ball, is removed, and the flesh is mixed with salt, curry, pepper and other seasonings, making it a genuine cold dressed dish. If the flesh is used as an ingredient to make premium avocado ice cream, ordinary ice cream cannot compare with it. Eating fresh avocado really lets you appreciate a unique fruit flavor, and it also provides rich nutrition.

Compared with ordinary fruits, avocado flesh has a fat content as high as 30%, which is 20 to 200 times that of banana and 40 to 400 times that of apple, so it has the laudatory name of “tree butter” and can compare with butter. Most of the fat it contains is unsaturated fatty acid (that is, it contains little cholesterol), and it is extremely easy to digest and absorb, with a digestion rate of 93%, making it even more suitable for elderly and weak people to eat to nourish the body. In addition, avocado also has the characteristics of high protein, high energy and low sugar. Therefore it is also called a “grain fruit”.

2. Where is avocado suitable to grow?

Avocado is a tropical fruit, so it has higher requirements for certain sunlight and water in life. Therefore, in today's fruit growing areas, it is generally not grown in China, because sometimes the temperature in parts of China is very high, so growing this fruit is not good. During the fruit growth period, it needs to be exposed to the sun for at least a period during the day, at least 8 hours during the day, all of it exposed to the sun. Without enough sunlight, the plant will find it hard to survive, so it will no longer produce more fruit.

1. Mulching

Avocado is a fruit tree that grows under tropical rainforest conditions and in competition for sunlight. A high-temperature and high-humidity environment makes it grow quickly, while if the environmental conditions are not available, it grows slowly. Therefore, foreign avocado cultivation mostly emphasizes growing grass or green manure near the plants in the early stage, and applying large amounts of mulch near the root zone, increasing topsoil organic matter through mulching, forming a rainforest root-zone environment similar to the place of origin, stabilizing root-zone ecological conditions, and promoting the reproduction of microorganisms that can suppress root rot activity. Therefore, from the young tree stage until the tree itself can form a mulch layer through fallen leaves and before root rot occurs, carrying out tree-disk mulching for young trees is especially important. Start mulching in winter, supplement the thickness in spring, and by summer a very good mulch layer can be formed. Root-zone mulching can also reduce soil moisture evaporation, alleviate damage to avocado from dry heat, lower soil temperature in summer and raise soil temperature in winter, increase soil organic matter, reduce weeds, and prevent soil erosion on slopes. But in the rainy season, guard against the mulched soil becoming too wet.

2. Drainage and irrigation

Avocado is evergreen year-round and needs the root-zone soil to remain moist throughout the year. It is very sensitive to soil drought. Once there is a shortage of water, physiological functions are blocked, tree vigor weakens, causing leaf drop and fruit drop, and cold resistance in winter decreases, so it should be irrigated appropriately during drought. From fruit set to fruit maturity, maintaining soil moisture is crucial. If drought occurs in the first month after fruit set, young fruit drops severely. On Hainan Island, the dry and hot weather in April and May causes severe fruit drop in avocado. Therefore, if there are 10 to 20 consecutive clear days and the orchard soil begins to crack slightly, irrigation should be carried out in time; if rainfall remains below transpiration and evaporation for a long time, supplementary irrigation should also be given. But irrigation must be just right, both sufficient and absolutely not excessive. Generally, wetting the soil thoroughly is appropriate. If it is too wet, it will aggravate root rot and also reduce the soluble solids content of the fruit. It is best to use sprinkler irrigation or drip irrigation. Flood irrigation may cause root rot, while drip irrigation can save 50% to 60% of water. If drought causes leaves to begin curling, the canopy can also be sprayed with water. In the rainy season, attention should be paid to drainage, especially in flatland orchards.

3. Fertilization

The young tree period of 1 to 4 years after avocado planting is the period for laying the foundation for high-yield and high-quality avocado cultivation. Fertilization should be reasonable to promote rapid and fast growth of young trees. The sign of fertilizer deficiency in avocado trees is severe leaf drop and branch dieback. Reasonable fertilization for young and fruiting avocado trees must determine the type and amount of fertilizer according to soil fertility, tree age, plant growth, or growth and fruiting conditions. Generally, complete fertilizers such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium should be applied in a balanced way. It is best to guide fertilization through soil and leaf nutrient analysis. The red soil slopes of South China are deficient in organic matter, available potassium and available phosphorus, so even more attention should be paid to the application of potassium and phosphorus fertilizers.

The root system of young avocado trees is easily damaged by nitrogen fertilizer, and applying too much nitrogen fertilizer easily causes excessive vegetative growth of branches and leaves, delaying fruiting, so attention should be paid to nitrogen fertilizer application. Abroad, 110 to 450 g of pure nitrogen is applied per tree per year, increasing year by year as the tree age increases, with half of it using organic fertilizer as the nitrogen source. In the first year after planting, it should be applied little and often. In areas with frost, nitrogen fertilizer should be stopped in autumn and winter, and more phosphorus and potassium fertilizers should be applied, to avoid cold damage from winter shoots. Superphosphate is applied at 900 g per tree per year. Potassium sulfate is applied at 1.8 to 2.2 kg per tree per year.