By Lourdes Mederos | UF News
Think you can’t grow avocados in the chilly winters of North Florida? Think again.
The significant cold snap of January 2026, which sent temperatures plunging across the Sunshine State, has become the optimal testing grounds for University of Florida scientists developing new cold-hardy avocados at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).
The chill underscored just how valuable this research is and demonstrated that several UF/IFAS-bred avocado types can withstand temperatures that would normally wipe out commercial varieties.
José Chaparro, an associate professor of horticultural sciences at UF/IFAS, is leading the effort to breed avocados that can thrive in North Central Florida. This ambitious goal is inspired by both personal passion and decades of UF/IFAS innovation in adapting fruit crops to challenging climates.
“I’m from Puerto Rico, and we love avocados,” Chaparro said. “But in Gainesville and North Florida, there are very few trees because the types grown in South Florida or California just can’t survive our winters.”
The UF/IFAS plant breeding program has spent more than 70 years creating fruit varieties suited to Florida’s diverse environments, including peaches, citrus, blueberries, finger limes and other crops that have become staples of the state’s agricultural landscape.
Building on this legacy, the avocado breeding program launched in 2005 with a simple purpose: to produce an avocado that survives hard freezes and meets commercial expectations for fruit quality.
“Standard commercial types like the globally popular Hass avocado cannot tolerate deep cold, as South Florida’s West Indian avocados begin to suffer damage around 31 degrees and California’s Guatemalan-Mexican hybrids struggle below 26 degrees,” said Chaparro.
The UF/IFAS breeding lines are now demonstrating survival at temperatures as low as 17 to 18 degrees, a significant advancement for avocado cultivation, according to Chaparro.
A major development in evaluating the breeding varieties came during the significant freeze of January 2026, which provided an extended, naturally occurring test of cold tolerance.
“This year was excellent for separating and categorizing different levels of cold resistance,” Chaparro said. “You could clearly see which trees were damaged and which ones stayed green.”
Chaparro’s team evaluates cold tolerance by growing seedlings outdoors and exposing them to natural winter events. Generational improvements in the breeding program have resulted in fruit that is larger, richer in oil and more resistant to the fruit-rotting fungus known as anthracnose. This is when you compare it to the primitive material the project began with. Continued work is still needed to improve peel thickness and reduce cracking during Florida’s summer rains.
“We’ve made significant progress,” he said. “But we’re still working on developing a peel that won’t crack and that meets the expectations of today’s avocado consumer market.”
Although the program’s current selections are closer to Mexican-type avocados, Chaparro aims to eventually produce a Florida-grown avocado with characteristics like the Hass variety, including creamy, high-oil flesh and a peel that darkens as it ripens.
“Consumers today want an avocado that turns black when it’s ripe,” he said. “They also prefer high oil content because it makes a thicker, creamier guacamole.”
Test plots are already in place with growers across Florida to help identify the most promising material. This year, the team is working to identify the best parent trees for cold-resistant breeding and then cross those parents with selections that exhibit desirable fruit quality.
“We’re trying to identify the avocados that give us the strongest cold resistance,” Chaparro said. “Then we will cross those with avocados that have thicker skin and better fruit quality.”
As the agricultural landscape shifts, Chaparro believes cold-hardy avocados represent an important opportunity for Florida. He notes that California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas all face increasing water limitations, while Hawaii encounters high transportation and labor costs. Florida, by comparison, has available land and a reliable water supply.
“The missing piece of the puzzle has always been cold resistance,” Chaparro said. “If we can provide that, we open the door for avocado production much farther north.”