Even as a fixture in California cuisine and a sizable industry for the state’s farmers, avocados have presented an ongoing mystery for scientists: How do they easily flip sexes?

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, California researchers have finally answered that question by tracing the process in avocado trees back to a single gene.

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“Even for a plant that is so familiar to us, there’s been this great mystery for so long,” Jeffrey Groh, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley and first author of the study, told SFGATE. “It’s super exciting to lift the hood on this remarkable example of the diversity of sexual reproduction strategies in plants.”

In California, where avocados are the official........

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