The pine-cone shaped pineapple (Ananas cosmosus) is a tropical fruit in South Africa and is grown in tropical regions all over the world.
Farming Pineapples
The fruit is a member of the Bromeliaceae family, which is native to the tropical Americas. It is a diverse plant family with over 3470 species, of which many are popular garden plants.
The pineapple has been revered in the ancient cultures of the Americas where it was used as fresh fruit, in folk medicine, and the fibers of the leaves used as a textile.
Vitamin C-rich pineapples, a compound fruit of small berries presses together, are produced as a single fruit formed in the middle of a spiralling group of leaves growing from a thick stem. The tropical plant prefers warm, humid and frost-free climates and grows well in sandy, slightly acidic soil.
Pineapples are harvested twice every five years. The first harvest is at 26 to 30 months and the second harvest is 18 months later. The planting of pineapples is staggered to ensure the pineapples can be harvested daily for most of the year. Harvesting pineapples in South Africa starts in March and continues until mid-December.
There are two main varieties of pineapples commercially grown in South Africa, the smooth-leaf Cayenne (mostly produced in the Eastern Cape) and the thorny-leaf Queen (largely produced in KwaZulu-Natal).
Queen is sweeter and mostly sold as fresh fruit, while Cayenne’s larger size and higher juice content make it suitable for processing into juice and canned pineapple products.
History of Pineapple Production
The explorer Christopher Columbus first ‘discovered’ the pineapple in 1493 on the island of Guadalupe in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea.
Along with Portuguese explorers to South and Central America, the fruit spread eastwards to Saint Helena Island, then Madagascar and India in the 1540s. Cultivation of the fruit was reported in Nepal in 1601, Singapore in 1637, and Taiwan in 1650.
The early cultivation of pineapple not only focused on the fresh fruit but also on the fibre and other uses. In the 1570s, the Philippines were making pina cloth from the fibres of the pineapple leaves, the Malaysians used it as birth control and wealthy Europeans grew the plant as an exotic garden plant, including King Louis XV in his greenhouse at Versailles.
Commercial farming of pineapples started with the cultivar Cayenne in the West Indies and Hawaii. This pineapple named after the Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana from where five plants were taken and propagated. Up to the 20th century, the cultivar ‘Smooth Cayenne’ dominated the pineapple market until the pineapple cultivar MD-2 took over as the leading fresh pineapple.
Due to the relatively short shelflife of pineapples, commercial transportation, shorter trade routes and preservation techniques were also developed alongside the commercial production of the fruit. Most notably the canning industry that developed in the 19th century and the growth in the pineapple juice in the 1980s contributed to pineapples becoming the third-largest tropical fruit in the world with an annual production of 25 million tonnes (2018), after bananas and mangoes.
Pineapples were introduced into South Africa in 1860 and was first grown in the KwaZulu-Natal province, then later introduced to the Eastern Cape.
World Pineapple Production
The world’s top three producers of pineapples are Costa Rica, Brazil and the Philippines, all producing over 2.5 million tonnes per year. Costa Rica and Brazil supply the US and Europe, while the Philippines export fresh pineapples mainly to Japan and Korea.
In Africa, pineapples are produced in Angola, Tanzania with some production in South Africa - less than 100 000 tonnes per year. Around 80% of South Africa’s pineapple production is destined for processing (Cayenne cultivar), the rest (mainly Queen) is sold in the local fresh fruit market.
Uses of Pineapple
Pineapples are high in vitamin C, dietary fibre, calcium, manganese and potassium. The fruit is also a digestive aid and has anti-inflammatory properties due to the bromelian content. Bromelian is a group of sulphur-containing protein-digesting enzymes and can be used as a meat tenderiser, to increase the solubility of gelatin in drinks, in latex-based paints and in leather tanning.
Bromelian in the form of powders, creams, tablets or as dietary supplements can treat inflammatory conditions such as sinusitis and arthritis and applied topically, treats wounds and removes dead skin from burn wounds.
Depending on the cultivar, the pineapple is eaten as a fresh fruit or canned, processed into juice, jam and chutneys. It is also said that pineapple juice reduces the symptoms of motion sickness. Fresh pineapple is incorporated into curries, pairs well with ham and other meats and can be fermented to produce a sweetmeat called nata de pina.
Young pineapple leaves are eaten as a vegetable in Africa and the poisonous unripe fruit used as a poison for arrow points. The fibre in pineapple leaves is used for weaving cloth, making shoes, fishing nets and stringing jewellery.
By Marinda Louw
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