“The seeds of innovation appear to be seedless,” reports Israel’s MIGAL Galilee Research Institute.

“According to game-changing research led by our very own Dr. Lior Rubinovich, it is now finally possible to grow avocado plants solely from tissue culture.”

Cultivated avocados can bring a bushel full of advantages: The fruit is free of deformities, impervious to crop diseases, much faster-growing, and genetically uniform because all plants originate from the same handpicked healthy tissue.

MIGAL has founded a spinoff company, Bestree, to begin producing and marketing avocado seedling cultures, right near its home base in northern Israel.

This move makes a lot of business sense, given that avocados are gaining popularity across the globe. Some 15 million new avocado seedlings are planted worldwide each year, with increased demand from European countries as well as India, China and Japan.

Whereas traditional avocado seedlings are difficult and expensive to export due to plant protection regulations that try to keep crop diseases from spreading from country to country, cultured seedlings from sterilized tissue wouldn’t be subject to the same strict rules and they would grow faster and more easily.

“Development in tissue cultures improves the quality of the avocado seedlings, their availability and their health and ensures disease-free plants,” said Rubinovich.