MEXICO CITY — U.S. consumers will finally get the chance to try avocados from Jalisco after 25 years in which neighboring Michoacan has been the only Mexican state authorized to send the green fruit to the U.S. market.

That just may help with prices, which have soared this year to over $2 per fruit amid a dip in production in Michoacan.

Growers and packers in Jalisco, just northwest of Michoacan, expressed hope that their state can provide more consistent production levels and stability for prices for avocados, which have fluctuated widely amid seasonal supply shortages.

Eleven trucks bearing 200 tons of avocados from Jalisco lined up Thursday in the mountain town of Zapotlan El Grande to set out for the United States.

“When we were talking about very high prices a month ago, it was because the market wasn’t getting enough supply,” said Javier Medina Villanueva, president of the Jalisco Avocado Export Association. “So we believe that the entry of Jalisco will close that supply shortage. ... I think prices will stabilize.”

U.S. consumers won’t recognize the difference: Jalisco avocados won’t bear any special tag, and will be labeled simply as “avocados from Mexico” — a phrase promoted for years by Michoacan producers.

The head of the Michoacan-based Association of Mexican Avocado Growers and Packers, Jose Luis Gallardo, said he doesn’t see Jalisco, or any of the other Mexican states now clamoring for U.S. export certification, as competition.

“Today is a day of joy for everyone, knowing that Jalisco is here, but it is going to be happier when the State of Mexico comes, when Nayarit, Colima, Puebla, Morelos come,” Gallardo said of the other states, noting there was room for more exports; last season’s production in Michoacan was down by about 200,000 tons.

Mexico currently supplies about 92% of U.S. imports of the fruit, and Mexico’s agriculture department says it is working to get more states certified. About a half-dozen states grow significant quantities of the fruit, which prefers higher altitudes and cooler climates in Mexico.

Medina Villanueva noted that meeting U.S. sanitary requirements wasn’t easy. “It took 10 years,” he said. “It took patience.”

U.S. agricultural inspectors have to certify that Mexican avocados don’t carry diseases or pests that would harm U.S. orchards. The Mexican harvest is January through March, while U.S. production runs from April to September.

The inspections were halted in February for about 10 days after one of the U.S. inspectors was threatened in Michoacan, where growers are routinely subject to extortion by drug cartels. Some packers in Michoacan were reportedly buying avocados from other, noncertified states and trying to pass them off as being from Michoacan, and were angry the U.S. inspector wouldn’t go along with that.

Exports resumed after Mexico and the United States agreed “to enact the measures that ensure the safety” of the inspectors.

Exports were worth about $2.8 billion to Mexico in 2021. The price Mexican growers get for their crops — as little as $1 per pound — is still far higher than any other crop they could grow, so much so that avocados have lifted thousands of small producers out of poverty.