Feijoas

Most named feijoa cultivars trace to two private New Zealand breeders, Nigel Ritson and Roy Hart, rather than any government program. Ritson established an orchard of over a thousand feijoa trees on his Golden Bay property in 1991 and holds official rights on four named cultivars, describing his goal as a decades-long pursuit of a feijoa that is large, abundant, disease-resistant, delicious, and stores well.

Nikita, one of the earliest-ripening feijoa varieties available, is a genuine exception — it originates from the Nikita Botanic Garden, a historic subtropical plant research institution in Crimea, Ukraine.