GEM

Genetics	Probably mostly Guatemalan
Type	A
Fruit Size	7 - 11oz
Harvest	March - September

Origin Story from Greg Alder's GEM Profile:

"Variety development and history

Let’s not be surprised that GEM is precocious, considering its lineage. As the GEM patent reads, “The seed that produced the new variety of the present invention was collected in 1985 from open-pollinated avocado trees of the ‘Gwen’ variety.” Gwen is likewise precocious.

Furthermore, Gwen is thought by many to be a great grandchild of the Lyon variety — Gwen is a seedling of Thille, Thille is a seedling of Hass, Hass is probably a seedling of Lyon. Wrote Bob Bergh in “Breeding Avocados at C.R.C.” of the Lyon variety: Lyon “bears so precociously and so heavily that the tree is severely stunted and sometimes killed outright.”

Bergh was in charge of the University of California’s avocado breeding program during the 1980s when the seed that ultimately produced the original GEM tree was planted. He was also in charge during the 1960s when the seed that produced the original Gwen tree was planted.

In the 1960s, the variety Fuerte was seen by many as the best eating avocado. Fuerte’s flaw was that its tree didn’t produce consistently enough. The Hass variety had come along and proven to be a tree of more consistent production, except that the Hass fruit had the flaw of blackening skin. At the time, black skin on an avocado was associated with damage to the fruit. So in the 1960s, Bergh was trying to breed an avocado variety that combined Hass and Fuerte, that had a tree that produced at least as well as Hass but whose fruit stayed green like Fuerte. Bergh’s answer was Gwen. Gwen is like a green-skinned Hass.

But breeding avocados doesn’t happen overnight, and by the time Gwen reached avocado farmers in the late 1980s, avocado eaters had begun accepting the black skin of Hass. In fact, avocado eaters in California had started demanding that their avocados ripen black. It’s almost like Gwen was conspired against.

In the mid 1980s, around the same time that Gwen was going from patent into commercial production testing, Bergh was continuing to plant seeds to discover new varieties, and some of those seeds had come from Gwen avocados. One such Gwen seed was planted in field 3, row 29, spot 5 on a ranch in Camarillo, Ventura County.

This 3-29-5 seedling tree ended up producing fruit that ripened black like Hass (check one!), and the tree produced a lot of fruit (check two!). More than that, the tree produced all that fruit on a compact canopy like its mother Gwen (check three!). It was like a black-skinned Gwen.

It was an assistant to Bergh who most often observed and collected data on this seedling tree and the others on the Camarillo ranch, and ultimately tree 3-29-5 would bear his name, via his initials: Gray Edward Martin."