Who bred and named the Hass avocado?

Rudolph Hass bred and named the Hass avocado. In practice, Hass discovered and propagated the cultivar from a chance seedling rather than deliberately crossing two selected avocado varieties.

In 1926, Hass planted seeds purchased from Whittier nurseryman A. R. Rideout at his grove in La Habra Heights, California. One seedling resisted repeated attempts to graft it with Fuerte avocado wood. Hass left the vigorous tree growing, and it produced distinctive dark, bumpy fruit that his family enjoyed. He patented the tree in 1935 and gave it his surname.

Harold Brokaw, a Whittier nurseryman, propagated and sold grafted trees under an agreement with Hass; he was not the person who created or named the cultivar. Genetic research later indicated that Hass arose from Mexican and Guatemalan avocado ancestry, but the original seed’s exact parentage is unknown. “Hass,” not “Haas,” is the cultivar’s standard spelling.