CALIFORNIA AVOCADO ASSOCIATION 



73 



time being all the requests for citrus budwood will be referred to the Bud Supply 

 Department of the California Fruit Growers Exchange. In the case of other 

 fruits orchard surveys will be made and trees will be located which by their habit 

 of growth, character, and production of fruit appear to be typical of the variety 

 which it is desired to perpetuate. Commercial individual-tree performance records 

 will be started on an extensive scale so that after two or three years buds will not 

 only be cut from selected trees but from trees on which an actual record of the 

 amount and quality of fruit which they have produced for a series of years has 

 been secured. An accurate track will be kept of a portion at least of the progenies 

 of these selected buds, and performance records will be kept on these second 

 generation trees. Eventually all the budwood handled by the Association will be 

 taken from these second generation selected trees. 



This, in brief, outhnes the purpose of the Association. The question you 

 will naturally ask is, of what benefit is this association to me, an avocado grower? 

 In addition to being an avocado grower you are no doubt interested in other 

 fruits. You may have a few peach trees w-hich you wish to top-work to another 

 variety. The California Nurserymen's Bud Selection Association provides a 

 channel through which you can obtain scions for top-working, selected in just as 

 careful and painstaking a way as is possible. 



The Association's work benefits you when you come to purchase nursery 

 stock, if it is stock propagated from buds selected by the Association's staff. In 

 the direct activities of your own avocado association we will be very glad to 

 co-operate with you in establishing your own bud selection department, and if this 

 department is established on a sound working basis so that it can do for the 

 avocado interests what the Bud Supply Department of the California Fruit 

 Growers Exchange is doing for the citrus industry we would then refer our 

 requests for avocado budwood to your association. In addition we will be very 

 glad to assist you in starting performance record work, for if the various fruit 

 industries in the state can be induced to secure performance records on an exten- 

 sive scale for the particular fruit in which they are interested, and if these records 

 are made in a thorough, careful, painstaking way they will locate many trees which 

 can be used as sources of budwood and thus reduce the actual amount of record 

 work which the members of the staff of the California Nurserymen's Bud Selection 

 Association will have to do. 



In closing let me impress upon you that the California Nurserymen's Bud 

 Selection Association is operated as a public service. It is hoped that you as 

 members of the California Avocado Association, and also as individuals, will 

 utilize this service. 



GUATEMALAN AND MEXICAN AVOCADOS FRUITING IN 



FLORIDA 



JOHN B. BEACH. WEST PALM BEACH. FLORIDA 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



The avocado which has been grown commonly in Florida is of the tropical 

 or West Indian type, and only within the past fifteen years have any of the 

 Guatemalan type been tried. 



The first were from seeds introduced by the Bureau of Plant Industry, and 

 afterwards we began getting scions, and occasionally a budded tree from Cali- 

 fornia. The scions were mainly used for top-working old trees by cleft grafting 



