Why is my avocado hard in some parts but fully ripe in some others?

Question

I am fairly familiar with avocados. I buy and consume them regularly. But recently I encountered one that was quite the head scratcher. I normally buy green ones and leave them on my kitchen counter to ripen. This one too turned from green to dark green/blackish in a few days-everything went according to plan just like every other avocado I had. But when I opened it today it was soft and smushy in some parts but rubbery in some other parts. And it's uneven: although most parts near the pit were solid, some parts attached to the skin were also hard/unripe. So it wasn't layered. The flesh had a very healthy, normal green so it puzzled me even further since it didn't seem to have gone bad.

I don't think there'd been physical trauma. I don't remember dropping it. And it was certainly a solid happy green avocado all around when I bought it.

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Update:

I put the avocado, already halved and peeled, in an airtight container with some mango peel and mango chucks, as I expect them to release ethylene. Doesn't mango peel turn black? My understanding is that is the result of itself releasing ethylene after being peeled off the fruit. So I put it in a container together with the cut-open avocado and some lime juice for anti oxidation. It's been two days and a good part of the avocado is still rubbery. I don't even know if my idea has worked...

Answer 1

Avocados are naturally hard/rubbery/soapy when picked. They only ripen once they have been picked. Picking them damages the fruit near the stem, which signals the avocado to release ethylene, which is the fruit's cue to ripen. (similar to how bananas ripen.) The self-produced ethylene near the stem and environmental ethylene in the air enter the fruit through the exterior peel.

The peel is bumpy, with natural valleys for ethylene to gather. The fruit therefore ripens in a radial pattern from these points. You can see that sometimes in an overripe avocado, where the brown/mushy spots pull away from the fruit, leaving it somewhat like a golf ball with divots. The pit area is generally last to ripen.

Many commercial avocados are treated with wax to slow ripening. If that waxy coating is abraded in some places but intact in others, there will only be a few places where the ethylene cues the fruit to ripen. So there will be a streaky/uneven ripening, with the same general color inside, but some areas remaining hard and soapy.

Answer 2

It's not uncommon to encounter avocados with uneven ripening or texture variations. Avocados can sometimes exhibit different textures and consistencies, even within a single fruit. Several factors could contribute to the unusual texture you observed in the avocado:

1. Ripeness at the time of purchase: Avocados continue to ripen after being harvested. If the avocado was already quite ripe when you purchased it, it's possible that the variations in texture were a result of uneven ripening.

2. Internal factors: The texture variations you observed could be due to natural variations in the fruit's structure, such as differences in the thickness of the fruit's walls or the presence of different avocado tissue types.

3. Fruit maturity: Avocados are typically picked before they are fully mature to prevent damage during transportation. If the avocado was not fully mature when harvested, it might have had variations in texture during the ripening process.

While it can be puzzling to encounter an avocado with such variations in texture, it's generally not a cause for concern unless there are signs of spoilage or off odors.

Hope this helps.