Avocado lovers in Norway may soon have a reason to celebrate — and it’s not just about brunch. For the first time ever, a Norwegian researcher has succeeded in growing the tropical fruit right here in Norway, defying the country’s cold climate.
The breakthrough comes from the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), where a young researcher, Carolina Falcato Fialho Palma, decided to take on what many thought was impossible. Her small pilot project at NIBIO Særheim has now produced Norway’s very first homegrown avocados.
“I’ve always had a passion for exotic fruit,” Palma said, smiling. “We wanted to see if avocados could be grown in a Norwegian greenhouse, even though they usually thrive in warm, subtropical climates.”
It wasn’t an easy task. Avocado trees can grow up to six meters tall, while her greenhouse ceiling was only three. Palma and her team had to figure out how to make the trees bloom, get the flowers pollinated, and eventually set fruit — all in an environment that couldn’t be further from Mexico or Peru.
“We honestly didn’t expect to harvest anything,” she admitted. But to everyone’s surprise, two beautiful avocados ripened on the trees. After letting them rest for a week to fully mature, the big moment came — cutting them open.
“The avocados were perfect,” she said proudly. “We had 26 colleagues share the two fruits, and they scored high on both taste and texture. It was an amazing moment.”
Turning heat into hope
Encouraged by her success, Palma is now exploring how avocado production might actually work on a larger scale in Norway. The next step will be to move the experiment into NIBIO’s high-tech greenhouses in Jæren, where temperature, light, and humidity can be precisely controlled.
“In principle, we can grow almost anything in Norwegian greenhouses,” she said. “The challenge is making it affordable and sustainable.”
Heating is one of the biggest expenses. Currently, hot water heated with electricity keeps the greenhouses warm. Palma hopes to tap into waste heat from Norway’s industries and data centres instead. “We produce a lot of excess heat in Norway,” she explained. “If we can reuse that energy for agriculture, we can grow more heat-loving plants and extend the growing season.”
And she’s not stopping at avocados. Palma is already experimenting with passion fruit cultivation — a sign that her curiosity and optimism are only growing stronger.
“After managing to grow avocado,” she laughed, “I think passion fruit will be much easier.”
Her success may seem small — just two fruits — but for Norway, it’s a taste of what could be a greener, more self-sufficient future.
