Walk into any supermarket in an Indian city today, and you’ll likely spot a few baskets of avocados of different shapes and sizes. Once unfamiliar to most of us, this fruit has been steadily gaining popularity for its buttery texture and rich nutritional value, so much that it has become a staple on brunch menu’s.
Many even call it a “rich people’s food” because of its exotic nature and high price. Lately, social media too seems to be fuelling this trend, overflowing with posts about avocados — from smoothie recipes to skincare tips — making the fruit more fashionable than ever. Yet, behind its creamy allure, the avocado holds many untold stories that truly deserve attention.
Not just food
Avocado, botanically known as Persea americana, is native to Central America. Long before it became the Instagram sensation it is today, avocado was already a thing — about 10,000 years ago, in Coaxcatlan, Puebla (Mexico). In ancient Mesoamerica and northern South America, the fruit wasn’t just food; it held cultural and agricultural significance. The Spanish, upon their arrival, were smitten too, that they wrote about it with the same enthusiasm we now reserve for guacamole recipes.
However, the real shift came around 1900, when horticulturists realised that grafting could produce the best seedlings and turn avocado into a serious business. Since then, avocado cultivation has expanded to many regions with suitable climates, including India. Today, avocado is the fourth most important tropical fruit in the world, with Mexico leading global production, yielding over one million metric tons annually.
Do you like avocados? | Photo Credit: REUTERS
What are tepals?
The avocado, now a favourite fruit among people in India, has some truly fascinating biological processes. Interestingly, if we look closely at an avocado flower, it has six structures called tepals. These are like a mix of petals and sepals, and since it’s hard to tell the two apart, they are collectively called tepals.
But what’s truly fascinating is how the avocado’s flowers open and close twice in a day. Each flower is bisexual, meaning it has both male (stamens) and female (pistil) parts, but it doesn’t use them at the same time. The first time the flower opens, it acts as female, ready to receive pollen. The next day, it opens again — this time as male, releasing pollen. During the female phase, the stamens lie down against the tepals, while in the male phase; they stand upright and release pollen. This fascinating flowering behaviour of the avocado is botanically called protogynous dichogamy.
Avocado trees are divided into two flowering types, Group A and Group B, based on the timing of their flower openings. In Group A, flowers are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while in Group B, flowers are female in the afternoon and male in the morning. This complementary timing promotes cross-pollination between the two groups.
Temperature also plays a role: in warm weather, there is often a short overlap of one to three hours when both male and female flowers are open, allowing insects such as bees, attracted by the nectar produced in both phases — to transfer pollen between trees. Under cooler conditions, however, the timing of flower openings can shift or even reverse, demonstrating how finely tuned the avocado’s flowering system is to its environment.
This undated handout illustration supplied by Bournemouth University, Britain, in 2018 shows how human hunters stalked giant ground sloth to distract them before trying to land a killing blow.
When it concerns avocados, however, both giant ground sloths and humans have been on the same side and helped in their dispersal. | Photo Credit: Alex McCelland/Bournemouth University/Handout via REUTERS
How are they dispersed?
Seeds are nature’s travel plans, and most seeds are dispersed by wind, water or animals. Have you ever looked at an avocado pit and wondered ‘who would even swallow this’ ? How did these large-seeded fruits get dispersed before humans came along? Turns out, enormous herbivores like giant ground sloths were the avocado’s preferred couriers who would swallow avocado seeds whole, transporting them in their digestive tracts and depositing them far from the parent tree.
These ancient relatives of today’s sloths truly lived up to their name. Like bears and anteaters, they could stand on their hind legs, making them the largest bipedal mammals to have ever existed. Over 100 species of giant ground sloths roamed North, Central, and South America, ranging from the massive Megatherium americanum, which stood 3.5 metres (12 feet) tall and weighed up to 4 tonnes, to the much smaller 90 kg Cuban Megalocnus. The giant ground sloths of North America disappeared around 11,000 years ago, with their South American cousins disappearing about 10,200 years ago. This is where humans pitched in. After the extinction of Megatherium americanum, humans became the primary dispersers of avocado seeds.
An avocado on its tree. | Photo Credit: REUTERS
Wild relatives in India
In India, some wild relatives of the avocado are found in the Eastern Himalayas, belonging to the lesser-known genus Machilus, specifically Machilus edulis. The local communities of Sikkim and Darjeeling widely consume the fruit of this plant. These fruits are roughly the size of a plum, round in shape, and contain a seed larger than the pulp-reminiscent of the wild avocado (Persea americana) before domestication. Another species which is wild relative of avocado is Phoebe bootanica, which occurs in parts of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland. Its fruits are also traditionally consumed by indigenous communities in the region.
You might also wonder how a Central American plant like the avocado has close relatives growing so far away in India. This is, in fact, the very question that drives my research — exploring how these plants are related and how they dispersed across continents through deep evolutionary time. We may think avocados just go from farm to toast, but trust me, they’ve been on the move for millions of years.
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