In the jungle of Nicaragua’s lowlands, a secret was hidden among the roots.
Archaeobotanist Kevin Wann and his team analyzed the DNA of 47 native avocado varieties, 32 of them Nicaraguan, and compared it with more than 200 already known lineages. What they found was in no book: these avocados are genetically linked to populations in the south, on Colombia’s coast, not Mexico’s. 5.000 years ago, someone carried this fruit hundreds of kilometers across Central America, and its genetic trail was still there, intact, waiting for someone to read it.
The discovery comes at a critical moment. More than 80% of the 11 million tons of avocados produced each year worldwide are the Hass variety, all cloned from the same original branch, with barely any genetic variation. Wann believes that this hidden diversity in Nicaragua could be just what prevents the avocado from suffering the fate of the banana, devastated by a fungus because all the trees were, genetically, the same tree.
