PHILADELPHIA - Soon, growers can purchase a new avocado variety developed over the past half-century. The Luna UCRas, it's known, offers consumers great taste, a rind that turns black when ripe, and a high-quality postharvest. The smaller trees will allow for denser plantings, safer harvesting, and less pruning. It has a particular type of flower, making it a good pollinator for many avocado varieties.
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University Of California Releases A New Avocado Variety
This includes the Hass variety, which is the most popular in the world. By increasing pollination, planting Luna UCRs with other varieties can help increase yields.
Agricultural scientists at the University of California Riverside developed the Luna UCR. It is also known as the BL516. The patent is pending and credited to Mary Lu Arpaia, a UC Cooperative Extension horticulturist based in UCR, and Eric Focht, a UCR Staff Research Associate in the Botany and Plant Sciences Department of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. Two of the UCR scientists who developed the Luna UCR are now deceased.
A partnership between Eurosemillas, SA, an international company specializing in the marketing of proprietary crop variety, and a Spanish-based company, Eurosemillas, will allow growers to access this variety worldwide. Eurosemillas holds the rights to the variety under an agreement negotiated by UCR’s Office of Technology Partnerships. Eurosemillas is partnering with growers from 14 countries to produce the Luna UCR.
Generations developed Luna UCR—the work of pioneering plant scientist B.O. Bob Bergh, in the 1950s. We can now enjoy the fruits of his and his successors' labors for another 60 years.
