Quick Take:
An Aptos biotech company says it has created the world’s first self-fertile nonpareil almond variety — a breakthrough that could help farmers dramatically cut costs and develop more sustainable farming practices.
California produces 80% of the world’s almond supply. But the industry’s most popular type of almond might be the most challenging to grow.
Nonpareil almonds are the most widely grown variety in the state and are known for their superior taste and high market value.
However, nonpareil almond trees can only produce nuts when their flowers are fertilized with pollen from a different tree, requiring growers to rely on expensive harvesting methods that require more land, water and labor.
An Aptos-based biotechnology company, Ohalo Genetics, recently announced the development of the world’s first nonpareil almond variety that can generate nuts without the help of pollen from other trees.
The company has named this new variety “FruitionOne.” After developing a proprietary breeding technique, scientists and plant breeders at Ohalo say they were able to delete a genetic trait that blocks the traditional nonpareil flowers’ ability to become fertilized from its own pollen. Now, trees have the potential to fertilize themselves — a concept known as self-fertilization.
Ohalo says that the four years of research that went into the project will lead to more sustainable land use practices and profitability for farmers. They anticipate huge economic benefits will come from more reliable yields.
Nonpareil growers plant their orchards in alternating rows of pollinator and non-pollinator trees. A pollinator tree’s main job is to fertilize its neighbor. It still produces nuts — they are just lower quality.
And with each tree type blooming on its own schedule, farmers have to make multiple passes with equipment to collect the nuts at different times.
FruitionOne would only need one harvesting machine to sweep through an orchard. Ohalo predicts introducing a self-fertile variety could reduce labor costs by 30%.
Around 40% of the almonds produced in California are nonpareils, a potentially large market opportunity for Ohalo.
While the startup promises other benefits, including more reliable yields and profits, there is still a long way to go before the industry can begin reaping the rewards.
After recently receiving approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ohalo plans to begin commercial planting in 2027.
“It’s super exciting,” said Reid Robinson, CEO of Yuba City-based Sierra Gold Nursery, which is partnering with Ohalo to test the variety over the next three years. “There’s a lot of work, science and hard work that goes on behind the scenes to make this all happen.”
Once testing is complete, it can still be hard to predict whether the variety will have widespread commercial success over time.
“It’s a step forward. Maybe it’s a touchdown pass or maybe it’s a fumble,” said UC Davis geneticist and plant breeder Tom Gradziel. “The experience in the past is that because the environment is complex and changing, things don’t go as planned.”
Presently, nonpareil almond farmers must coordinate millions of bees to pollinate the two different types of trees. The conditions are tricky. To match up the 50% of pollinator trees with the rest of the orchard, growers not only need synchronized blooms, but also the perfect weather for bees to operate. The whole ordeal happens in a 10-day window.
“Seasons can come down to those 10 days,” Robinson said. “So, if you can make them less risky for the growers, it’s one of the biggest single drawing points of the whole thing.”
Growers depend on beekeepers to supply bees to move pollen from neighboring trees to almond blossoms.
Nonpareil almonds have a short pollination window in February – a month when Californian bees typically have retreated into their hives to stay warm through the winter. This requires growers to cart in bees from farther-away, warmer places such as Texas and Florida.
UC Davis’s Gadziel said the ideal setup is to have two full-frame bee hives every acre to promote successful pollination. With some almond farms as big as 250-plus acres, it can be expensive.
“That’s an awful lot of money a grower could save if a grower doesn’t need honey bees,” Gradziel said.
In 2023, the average price for a bee colony per acre in California was $310, according to a National Agricultural Statistics Service and United State Department of Agriculture survey. The introduction of Ohalo’s FruitionOne variety could cut these costs by 50% or more.
Pollen does not need to travel great distances to fertilize flowers in FruitionOne trees, the company said in a press release. Because they are self-fertile, the pollen can fall into any of the flowers from the same tree.
The life cycle of an almond orchard is about 20 years. After a self-fertile crop is placed in nature, it is unpredictable how it will fare in an unstable climate. Even if FruitionOne is able to produce nuts consistently for the first five years, some growers might not feel confident in the crop.
“The psychology of a grower is that they want to see how it performs through a couple of seasons before they’re committed on a large scale,” said Seana Day, CEO of Dave Wilson Nursery in Hickman. “That doesn’t happen overnight.”
There is a tremendous amount of time, energy and effort that goes into running a successful almond orchard — leading to a range of risk aversion amongst growers. Robinson navigates complicated relationships with his customers when supplying experimental trees. Putting trust into a tree that will be tied to his business for two decades is not something he takes lightly.
“It’s important to know that growers, people like Ohalo, and Sierra Gold, are all just trying to solve problems and make the supply chain a little more reliable,” Robinson said. “We’re working through things to make sure people are having a good experience.”
Day is already familiar with the benefits. About 15 years ago, Dave Wilson Nursery took a gamble on Zaiger Genetics’ Independence variety — the first self-fertile almond variety available on the market.
For someone who has experienced the improvements that a self-fertile variety can offer firsthand, she’s hopeful that Ohalo’s vision will indeed come to fruition.
“We see this as a really important innovation,” Day said. “The introduction of additional self-fertile varieties, in particular with respect to the nonpareil, is certainly a good feature to introduce into the marketplace.”