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Preface

The history of fruit growing in tropical America commenced with the second voyage of Columbus. The historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo tells us (k526) that the first Spanish colonists brought oranges, grapes and other fruits to Hispaniola, while the great Cprtes, in his fourth letter to the King, asked that no ship be permitted to set sail for Mexico without bringing plants and seeds of those crops to which the Spaniards were accustomed in the Madre Patria but did not find in Mexico.

At the same time Oviedo, who was the first chronicler to write at length on the natural history of the American tropics, described in detail many of the excellent fruits which had never before been seen by Europeans. Among these were the pineapple, the avocado, the anonas; the papaya and the guava, a galaxy sufficient to form the basis of a fruit economy, in marked contrast to the paucity of good fruits which Europeans found in more northern latitudes.

In spite of climatic conditions which made possible the cultivation of native fruits as well as many of those from the North, the development of fruit culture in tropical America has been slow. It was only toward the end of the past century that things really began to happen. Commercial production of bananas came first. tons placed upon the market banana one of If measured in 1905, fifty years ago the Gros Michel was probably varieties the most important fruit variety in the world.

It was not until 1900 that the practice of grafting began to be applied to tropical fruits, on a commercial scale, began to be propagated by grafting. A little work had previously been done along this line in the West Indies, together with the selection of