The 2015 World Floral Expo filled the Los Angeles Convention Center with beautiful blooms March 11-13 and brought together all segments of the floral chain, from importers to retail florists.

For HLB Specialties, a tropical produce supplier based in Pompano Beach, FL, weather during the first two months of the year has presented challenges for its core item of papayas.

Homero Levy de Barros, president of HLB Specialties, said his company ships both the large and small papaya varieties, which it sources from Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala.

He said two recent hurricanes in Hawaii have wiped out up to 50 percent of the papaya production on that island state.

It is no secret that avocado sales have skyrocketed in the past decade. In the 1990s, it was not unusual for total annual U.S. consumption to be around the 500 million-pound mark. In 2006, U.S. consumption topped the one billion-pound mark for the first time. In 2015, experts are saying that more than two billion pounds will be consumed by U.S. households when the final numbers are tallied.

Kaysha Rajani joins Marketing Plus as creative services manager to help continue its success as a full-service creative marketing agency that represents several leaders in the produce industry.

“Brooks Tropicals grows the ‘who’s-who’ of tropical produce items,” said Mary Ostlund, marketing director for the Homestead, FL-based tropical produce grower-shipper. “Tropicals are growing at such a strong rate, and we closely watch for the next sky-rocketing fruit. The fun is that everyone knows more tropicals will go mainstream in the future.”

Brooks Tropicals’ Caribbean Red papayas are available year round, as are the majority of its other tropical items.

Mexican papayas are grown in 21 states across Mexico, but three — Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca — represent 55 percent of the total output. Other papaya-producing states include Colima, Guerrero and Michoacan, which combined represent 23 percent of Mexico’s production.

Gustavo Garcia Cuevas, president of the National Papaya Board of Mexico, commonly referred to as ProPapaya, said these states are also in a growing trend.