For a few weeks every autumn, the Australian avocado category is at its most fragile. Shepard is winding down. Queensland Hass is coming on. And the fruit at both ends of that handover is the hardest of the year to get right.

What the monitoring shows

Avocados Australia sets the maturity standard at 23 per cent dry matter for Hass and 21 per cent for Shepard at harvest. Those are the minimum levels its consumer research found necessary for fruit to eat well.

In the first two weeks of April 2025, the industry's wholesale maturity monitoring sampled nine lots of Queensland Hass. Six fell below the standard. By May, 11 of 12 samples cleared it, according to Avocados Australia.

Averages hide the problem, too. In early February 2026 two Shepard samples averaged 22 to 23 per cent, yet individual fruit ranged from 18.7 to 27.3 per cent. Two samples, one week, and a spread of nearly nine points.

So the early Hass problem isn't that growers can't produce mature fruit. It's that some of it gets picked weeks before it's ready, because the price for the first Hass of the season is tempting.

The grower side

Test dry matter by block, on a sample big enough to mean something, and test again as harvest moves through the orchard. A single good result from the best block tells you nothing about the rest.

Late Shepard needs the opposite kind of care. Fruit left on the tree to stretch the season eats well but has little shelf life left, and it bruises easily. Get the field heat out quickly after picking, hold temperature steady through transit, and read the loggers when the load arrives instead of filing them.

The buyer side

If you're buying through the handover, ask for recent dry matter results on every consignment of early Hass, and be prepared to say no to fruit that only just scrapes the line. Immature Hass doesn't ripen. It goes rubbery, and the shopper who took it home doesn't come back for a fortnight.

Keep the two varieties apart from the distribution centre to the shelf. Shepard stays green when it's ripe and Hass darkens, so a mixed display teaches shoppers to squeeze everything and trust nothing. Label cartons clearly, store them separately, and tell store teams which is which.

Early Hass also behaves differently in the ripening room. Work with your ripener on settings for the first few weeks, and don't book your deepest promotion of the quarter into the fortnight when supply is least predictable.

How we handle it

At The Avolution we work with more than 120 growers across Australia's key growing regions, which means we see the handover from both ends at once. We enforce the 23 per cent minimum on Hass across that network, and we'd sooner be short for a week than supply fruit that won't ripen. Quality is a system outcome. It's decided across the whole chain, and the transition is where the chain is under the most strain.

The transition isn't a gap between two seasons. It's the annual test of whether the category has earned its shelf space. If you'd like to plan your program through it, get in touch, or see how we work with growers.

References

• Avocados Australia (2026), Maturity Monitoring, https://avocado.org.au/our-programs/supply-chain-data/maturity-monitoring/, accessed 10 November 2026
• Avocados Australia (2025), Customers urged to communicate with suppliers on dry matter levels, https://avocado.org.au/public-articles/dry-matter-update-28mar2025guac/, accessed 10 November 2026
• Avocados Australia (2025), Fruit Quality Update, https://avocado.org.au/public-articles/fruit-quality-update-guac-20june2025/, accessed 10 November 2026
• Avocados Australia (2026), January Retail Quality and Maturity Report, https://avocado.org.au/public-articles/january-fruit-quality-report-guac13feb2026/, accessed 10 November 2026