America’s Pistachio Industry Came from a Single Seed | Hacker News Reader

America’s Pistachio Industry Came from a Single Seed

atlasobscura.com

78 pointsthedday23 comments

Pistacchios are tricky plants to cultivate.

I have 6 plants (4f, 2m) still in pots that I've yet to put into an orchard, but they have climate requirements that are very challenging -- the females are wind pollinated by the males, they need / appreciate cold winters, they really don't like wet feet, but they want a lot of heat through summer, though they really don't want much humidity (well the plants don't care, but you'll have issues with salmonella if you don't have very dry summers).

The world's avocado industry essentially comes from a single tree - the mother Hass. Apparently at a conference years back, organisers gave out bud wood from it, so there're clones spread across the world now (the original is now dead).

Lots of different root-stocks, it should be added.

With a few exceptions; 80% of the market is Hass.

One of the exceptions is South Africa, where other varieties are common, but Hass is still a majority. Also note that there are new "Hass" varieties that are essentially mutations of the original Hass (it would seem; often it is not certain what the actual DNA of the variant would be or how it came to be).

Note that the Dominican republic is usually listed as a top 3 producer, but none of it is Hass and none of it is exported.

Sanctions aside, Iranian pistachios taste so much better.

TFA states:

"In Iran, more than 50 varieties are cultivated, not counting the great number of wild pistachios. But even today, the vast majority of California’s pistachio trees are Kerman."

would be interesting if local producers got into this. given the prevalence of boutique tomatoes and the like, I could see this working.

how far off from Turkish pistachios are they? I can get those through nuts.com and a few other places and they are certainly different from what we encounter in the super market.

Pretty far. Iranian pistachios are identical to Californian pistachios, just red in color. Commenter above probably is influenced by the red dye and in a blind taste would fail to distinguish between the two. Turkish/Armenian pistachios on the other hand are smaller, more elongated and if salted typically are packaged with coarser salt. I prefer the latter, although they can be more pain to peel.

How do you source/buy these different kinds? I've mostly had Californian pistachios, and I think they're amazing. But I keep hearing about the Iranian/Turkish varieties which is probably where the pistachio plant is native to.

"This California pistachio is brought to you courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service and the Shah of Iran" ...

This is a quote from the article.

And those pistachio trees use a whopping 57 gallons of water a day in early July: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/4/6/1376064/-The-Nut-A...

And we grow them in the desert of all places.

Whenever I see things like this, I wonder why are they talking about gallons per nut or tree or whatever? Shouldn't it be relative to how many grams protein/fat/carbs it produces per gallon compared to other food sources?

>Whenever I see things like this, I wonder why are they talking about gallons per nut or tree or whatever?

Because most people can relate to gallons and water rights are measured in terms of liquid volume. In a drought-prone area having a conversation about where the water is going is discussed in those terms instead of how many grams protein/fat/carbs it produces per gallon compared to other food sources.

But its not a useful metric if you are not comparing against other food sources on an equal basis.

Sure if you're going to argue efficiency of gallons to calories, but it misses the point. Agricultural water use in California is extremely wasteful because of decades old water sharing and pricing agreements. Talking about curbing those inefficient and wasteful uses is more important because farmers need to pay fair and reasonable prices for water first. Once that happens they'll decide on their own the most effective use of the water they have.

from one seed? So a disease could wipe it all out.

I thought the same. Look at Banana Industry the disease first wiped Gros Michel and now seriously threatens Cavendish. That wouldn't be such problem if only one cultivar wasn't so widespread.

Well, bananas are worse off, as they're all clones. Pistachios may have shared ancestry, but there'll be at least some genetic diversity in the crop now (as well as the originals back in Iran etc.).

Yeah, it is super interesting to read about. Our food monoculture is going to be a huge problem for us in the future.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35131751

> from one seed? So a disease could wipe it all out.

It depends what you mean by 'wipe it all out'

There are plenty of pistachio varieties, grown all over the planet, so the disease would need to spread far and wide -- but this is what many country's border controls are specifically designed to stop.

There's about 30 named fruiting pistachio varieties (compare ~3,000 apple, or ~500 edible banana) so we're at some greater risk, but if you were to ask a random sample of consumers to identify the different pistachio varieties by sight/taste I expect you'd find most would struggle.

A disease could even wipe out a population from a wide variety of ancestors. The thing that matters if any of the ancestors has encountered a type of this disease before and has found a way to be resilient for it (and pass it on into its genes).

Genetic diversity direcrly correlated with better odds that a subset of the population will be resistant to the disease. The subset of people with increased HIV resistance for example did not develop the trait in response to HIV, they where lucky enough to have it before the disease showed up.

> came from a single seed

This is impossible, obviously, and should not be intended to be taken literally

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