Numerical Methods for Classifying Avocado Cultivars

Abstract

There are three horticultural races of avocado ( Persea americanaMill.)—Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian. These races have several commercially important distinctions such as climatic adaptation, annual vs. alternate bearing tendencies, and fruit ripening season. To differentiate between these races, Popenoe (1920) developed a taxonomic key based on a limited number of leaf and fruit characteristics (see Table 1). Since that time, additional racial descriptors have been suggested by Hodgson (1950), Ruehle (1963), and Bergh (1975).