Popenoe: Avocados as Food in Guatemala 



107 



Florida, Avas able to extract a green oil 

 very much like olive oil in character. 

 While of bland, pleasant flavor, it pos- 

 sessed a slightly bitter after-taste which 

 was somewhat disagreeable. Further 

 experimentation would probably lead 

 to the discovery of a method of re- 

 moving this quality. 



It will doubtless be many years before 

 there will be a large enough supply of 

 avocados in the United States to permit 

 of their use for the extraction of oil, yet 

 the subject is one which must eventually 

 receive much attention. It is possible 

 that the large quantities of avocados 

 annually produced in the American 

 tropics might be utilized in the near 

 future for this purpose. 



A comparison of the possibilities of 

 the avocado with the olive as an oil 

 producer is suggestive and striking. 

 According to Professor Bioletti of the 

 University of California (writing in 

 Bailey's Standard Cyclopedia of Horti- 

 culture), olives in California produce 

 from one-half ton to over four tons of 

 fruit per acre. In France, 2.7 tons is 

 considered a maximum yield, and good 

 orchards are not expected to yield more 

 than 1.3 tons. One ton of olives is 

 calculated to yield about 35 gallons of 

 oil. The production of oil per acre, 

 therefore, varies in California from a 

 minimum of 18 gallons to a maximum 

 of 140. The average is said to be about 

 50 gallons. 



In Florida, an orchard of Trapp 

 avocados at five years of age has pro- 

 duced an average of four crates of fruit 

 per tree. Since there are 80 trees 

 planted to the acre, this gives 320 

 crates of fruit per acre. Each crate con- 

 tains an average of 40 avocados which 

 weigh about 12 ounces each; in other 

 words, a crate contains 30 pounds of 

 fruit. One acre therefore produces 320 

 times 30 or 9,600 pounds of fruit. 



In the analysis of the Trapp variety 

 made by Professor Jaffa the edible por- 



tion or pulp was found to constitute 

 71.5% of the entire fruit. The 9,600 

 pounds of fruit obtained from an acre 

 would therefore furnish 6,864 pounds of 

 pulp. The same analysis shows the 

 percentage of oil in the Trapp variety 

 to be 9.80.- The entire amount of oil 

 in this 6,864 pounds of pulp is therefore 

 672 pounds. Calculating roughly that 

 there would be 7 pounds of oil to the 

 gallon, this would make 96 gallons of 

 oil. We are assuming, however, that 

 all of the oil is saved, whereas Bioletti 

 states that only 50 to 65% of the oil 

 contained in the olive is recovered by 

 the process of extraction practiced in 

 California at the present day. Naturally, 

 since avocado oil has not been extracted 

 commercially up to the present time, 

 it is impossible to say what percentage 

 will be lost. Hagemann, in his Irmited 

 experiments, found that 18.5% of the 

 entire weight of the pulp was extracted 

 as oil. It is unlikely that the pulp 

 originally contained more than 30% of 

 oil, and it probably contained con- 

 siderably less. But calculating that the 

 maximum amount quoted for olives, 

 50%, will be lost in extraction, we still 

 have 48 gallons of oil, which is practically 

 the same as the average obtained from 

 the olive in California today. 



With every allowance for loss in ex- 

 traction, then, an acre of Trapp avo- 

 cados would yield as much oil as an 

 average acre of olives in California. 

 Recalling that the percentage of oil in 

 the Trapp is not quite 10, while in some 

 other varieties it is as high as 30, the 

 possibility of getting more oil from the 

 avocado than from the olive becomes 

 apparent at once. The whole subject 

 is new, of course, and the calculations 

 just given, while based on actual figures 

 obtained in Florida avocado groves and 

 in laboratory analyses of the fruit, can- 

 not be considered as anything more than 

 suggestive of the possibilities of this in- 

 teresting fruit along one very im]Dortant 

 line, the production of oil. 



