Pineapple

• 1. A Stone Pineapple

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  The pineapple, Ananas comosus, once inspired a British aristocrat to crown a hothouse with a stone cupola 14 metres tall, built in the shape of the fruit. That aristocrat was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, and the rooftop ornament is still known as the Dunmore Pineapple. It is an odd monument for a plant native to South America.

  Why would a spiky tropical fruit become a status symbol on European estates? How does a plant that fuses its flowers into a single body end up growing on plantations across several continents? And who paid the price for turning it into a global crop?

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• 2. Anatomy Of A Fruit

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  Count the spirals on a pineapple and the numbers tend to be 8 in one direction and 13 in the other. Both are Fibonacci numbers, and they come from two interlocking helices in the fruit's arrangement. The pattern is a clue to how the fruit forms. A plant usually produces up to 200 flowers, and some large-fruited cultivars exceed that. After the flowers open, their ovaries develop into berries, and the berries coalesce into one compact multiple fruit.

  A pineapple plant needs 12 to 20 months of growth before its stem turns into a spike-like flower cluster with over 100 spirally arranged flowers. Until then it is a herbaceous perennial with a short, stocky stem and tough, waxy leaves. There are 30 or more of these leaves, narrow and fleshy, with sharp spines along their margins.

  Commercial growers call the side shoots that appear after the first fruit "suckers." They sprout where the leaves meet the main stem. Growers can remove them to start new plants, or leave them to bear extra fruit on the original plant. The leafy top of a fruit can also be planted, and a new plant grows from it.

  Hummingbirds are the main wild pollinators of pineapples, and certain wild pineapples are foraged and pollinated at night by bats. On farms, seed development lowers fruit quality, so pollination is done by hand and seeds are kept only for breeding. In Hawaii, where pineapples were grown and canned industrially throughout the 20th century, bringing in hummingbirds was prohibited.

  Malate, an acid, is the pineapple's overnight storage. The plant uses CAM photosynthesis, fixing carbon dioxide at night and holding it as malate. It releases the gas during the day, which reduces photorespiration.

  Botanists place Ananas comosus in the family Bromeliaceae, where it is the most economically significant plant. They recognise five varieties of it, which were once treated as separate species. The genomes of three have been sequenced, including bracteatus, the wild progenitor. That wild form grows in Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador. The cultivated variety comosus has spread much further, and is naturalized in parts of Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific.

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• 3. Names And Origins

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  John Smith, an English explorer, used the words pine apple for a tropical fruit in 1624. In his era, apple was a general label for any unfamiliar tree fruit that was firm and round. Pine apple had meant the cone of a pine tree since the 14th century. Around 1540, Gonzalo Hernández Oviedo described piñas, or pomme de pin, meaning "apple of pine," in Hispaniola.

  The first English reference to the fruit itself appeared in 1568, in a translation from the French of André Thevet's The New Found World, or Antarctike. Thevet mentions a Hoyriri, which the Tupinambá people living near modern Rio de Janeiro cultivated and ate. It is now believed to be a pineapple. Later in the same translation he describes a "Nana made in the manner of a Pine apple," borrowing another Tupi word, nanas.

  When explorers first met them, the Tupi-Guarani and Carib peoples treated the fruit as a staple food and called it nanas. Many European languages adopted that name. It also gave the plant its scientific name, with comosus meaning "tufted" and pointing to the stem.

  The wild plant comes from the Paraná-Paraguay river drainages between southern Brazil and Paraguay. Little is known about how it was domesticated, but it spread as a crop across South America. Archaeological evidence of its use dates to 1200-800 BC in Peru and 200 BC-700 AD in Mexico, where the Mayas and Aztecs cultivated it. By the late 1400s the cultivated fruit was widely distributed and a staple food of Native Americans.

  On the 4th of November 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to encounter the pineapple, in Guadeloupe. He carried it back to Spain and called it piña de Indes, meaning "pine of the Indians." Peter Martyr documented it in Decades of the New World in 1516. Antonio Pigafetta wrote of it in Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, in 1524-1525. The first known illustration appeared in Oviedo's Historia General de Las Indias in 1535, and the Portuguese had taken the fruit from Brazil to India by 1550. Growing it on European soil would prove far harder than describing it.

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• 4. Pineries And Prestige

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  Near Leiden, Pieter de la Court, who lived from 1664 to 1739, developed the greenhouse methods that finally let Europe grow pineapples. Until then the fruit had fascinated Europeans mainly as a product of colonialism. Plants went from the Netherlands to English gardeners in 1719 and to French ones in 1730.

  At Dorney Court in Dorney, Buckinghamshire, the first pineapple in England was grown. In 1723 a huge "pineapple stove" was built to heat the plants at the Chelsea Physic Garden. In France, King Louis XV was presented in 1733 with a pineapple grown at Versailles. Peter the Great imported de la Court's method into St. Petersburg in the 1720s. In 1730, twenty pineapple saplings travelled from there to a greenhouse at Empress Anna's new Moscow palace.

  Direct imports were expensive, and the greenhouses called "pineries" demanded enormous outlays on equipment and labour. That cost made the pineapple a symbol of wealth. At dinner parties it served mostly as display rather than food, and hosts reused it again and again until it began to rot.

  In the second half of the 18th century, producing the fruit on British estates became a matter of fierce rivalry among wealthy aristocrats. In architecture, pineapple figures turned into decorative elements symbolizing hospitality. The aura of rarity would not last, because by the early 19th century fresh pineapples were arriving direct from the West Indies in quantities large enough to lower European prices.

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• 5. Plantations And Cultivars

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  In 1820 a cultivar called Smooth Cayenne was first imported to France. It was re-exported to the United Kingdom in 1835, and from there its cultivation spread via Hawaii to Australia and Africa. By the late 19th century, commercial production had specialized by region to shorten shipping times. The Azores supplied European markets, while Florida and the Caribbean dominated supply to North America.

  The Spanish brought the pineapple to Hawaii in the 18th century, where it is called hala kahiki, meaning "foreign hala." The first commercial plantation followed in 1886. James Dole moved to Hawaii in 1899 and in 1900 started a 60 acre plantation that grew into the Dole Food Company. Dole and Del Monte began growing pineapples on Oahu in 1901 and 1917, respectively, and the Maui Pineapple Company began on Maui in 1909. Dole pioneered commercial processing, and in 1911 his employee Henry Ginaca invented an automatic peeling and coring machine.

  Hawaiian production started to decline from the 1970s, because of competition and the shift to refrigerated sea transport. Dole ceased its cannery operations in Honolulu in 1991, and Del Monte ended its pineapple growing in Hawaii in 2008. In 2009 the Maui Pineapple Company cut back to supply only Maui. By 2013 the Dole Plantation on Oahu was the only grower left, producing about 0.1 percent of the world's pineapples. Even so, the fruit is sometimes used as a symbol of Hawaii, and dishes containing it are sometimes called "Hawaiian" for that reason alone.

  In the early 1900s, during the American colonial period, the US Bureau of Agriculture introduced Smooth Cayenne to the Philippines. Dole and Del Monte established plantations on Mindanao in the 1920s, in the provinces of Cotabato and Bukidnon respectively. Large-scale canning in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, had started from 1920. World War II severely damaged that trade, and Hawaii dominated international trade until the 1960s. In 2014 Del Monte Pacific Ltd., a Filipino company, completed its purchase of Del Monte Foods, so the Philippine plantations are now locally managed.

  In 2024, world production reached 29 million tonnes. Costa Rica, the Philippines and Indonesia each produced about 3 million tonnes.

  Smooth Cayenne is a cylindrical fruit of 2.5 to 3.0 kg, with high sugar and acid and leaves that have no spines. Those traits suit canning. Amerind peoples developed this ancient cultivar, and in some parts of Asia it is called Sarawak, after an area of Malaysia where it is grown. It was long the Hawaiian standard and the easiest to find in US grocery stores, until a cultivar called MD-2 replaced it over the mid-1990s and 2000s.

  The story of MD-2 begins in 1986, when the Pineapple Research Institute was dissolved and its assets were divided between Del Monte and Maui Land and Pineapple. Del Monte took cultivar 73-114, dubbed MD-2, to its plantations in Costa Rica and found it well suited there. It launched publicly in 1996 as Gold Extra Sweet. Del Monte also marketed cultivar 73-50, called CO-2, as Del Monte Gold. The Maui Pineapple Company had begun growing 73-50 in 1988 under the name Maui Gold, and its successor, the Hali'imaile Pineapple Company, still grows it on the slopes of Haleakala. Del Monte's success with MD-2 pushed Dole to obtain and grow its own, which led to the case Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. v. Dole Food Co.

  Kona sugarloaf weighs 2.5 to 3.0 kg and has white flesh with no woodiness in the centre. It has a high sugar content but no acid, which makes it unusually sweet. Natal queen, at 1.0 to 1.5 kg, has golden yellow, crisp flesh and a delicate mild flavor, and is grown in Australia, Malaysia and South Africa. Pernambuco is sweet and melting in texture but poorly adapted for shipping. Some Ananas species are grown as ornamentals for their color and novel fruit size, and the variety A. comosus 'Variegatus' is occasionally kept as a houseplant. Red Spanish, a squarish fruit of 1-2 kg with a pleasant aroma, ships well to distant markets, and its spiny leaves would matter in the Philippines for a very different reason.

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• 6. Piña Cloth

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  Nipis, a lustrous lace-like fabric, was woven from fibers taken from the long leaves of the Red Spanish pineapple. The Spanish introduced that cultivar from Latin America to the Philippines, where it was grown to produce piña fibers for textiles from at least the 17th century. Weavers adapted their native traditions, which had used fibers extracted from abacá.

  The finished cloth was usually decorated with intricate floral embroidery known as calado and sombrado. During the Spanish colonial period it was a luxury export from the Philippines, and it gained favor among European aristocracy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

  At home, the barong tagalog, the baro't saya and the traje de mestiza were made from the cloth for the Filipino upper class, as were women's kerchiefs called pañuelo. People favored it for its light, breezy quality, which suited the hot tropical climate of the islands. The industry was destroyed in the Second World War and is only now starting to be revived.

  The Philippines found a second use for the fruit in the 18th century. It is a jelly-like dessert called nata de piña, made by fermenting pineapple juice with the bacteria Komagataeibacter xylinus.

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• 7. Kitchen And Chemistry

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  Along roadsides in many tropical countries, pineapple is prepared and sold as a snack, whole or in halves with a stick inserted. In the West, whole cored slices with a cherry in the middle are a common garnish on hams. Chunks go into fruit salad, and also into savory dishes such as Hawaiian pizza or a grilled ring on a hamburger. Traditional dishes using the fruit include hamonado, afritada, kaeng som pla and Hawaiian haystack. Crushed pineapple appears in yogurt, jam, sweets and ice cream.

  The juice is a drink in its own right, and the main ingredient in cocktails such as the piña colada and in the drink tepache. Pineapple vinegar belongs to both Honduran and Filipino cuisine, where it is made locally. Mexican cooks usually make it from the peels of the whole fruit rather than the juice. In Taiwanese cuisine it is often produced by blending pineapple juice with grain vinegar.

  The European Union took 50% of the global total of pineapple juice in 2012-2016, and the Netherlands was the largest importer in Europe. Thailand, Costa Rica and the Netherlands were its major suppliers. In 2017, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines together consumed 47% of the world total. Consumption in China and India is low compared with their populations.

  A 100 g reference amount of raw pulp supplies 209 kJ of food energy. The pulp is 86% water, 13% carbohydrates and 0.5% protein, with negligible fat. It provides 40% of the Daily Value of manganese and 53% of vitamin C. The fruit and peels also contain diverse phytochemicals, including polyphenols such as gallic acid and chlorogenic acid.

  Bromelain is a group of proteolytic enzymes found in the stem, fruit, crown, core and leaves. With enough of it, raw pineapple juice may work as a meat marinade and tenderizer. The same enzymes can interfere with gelatin-based desserts and gel capsules, although cooking and canning can degrade their activity. Bromelain is under preliminary research, and its effects in the human body have not been adequately defined. It is marketed as a dietary supplement, and it may be unsafe in pregnancy, allergies or anticoagulation therapy.

  Because the pineapple is non-climacteric, it never becomes any riper than it was when harvested. That is why growers spray the plant growth regulator Ethephon on the fruit a week before harvest, producing ethylene that turns it golden yellow.

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• 8. Costs And Threats

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  Wilt disease, spread by mealybugs, is among the most feared threats to the crop. Heart rot is another, caused by the fungi Phytophthora cinnamomi and P. parasitica in wet conditions. Because the fungus enters through wounds, any suckers kept for propagation should be dipped in a fungicide. Pineapple pink disease turns the fruit brownish to black when it is heated during canning, and four bacteria are blamed: Acetobacter aceti, Gluconobacter oxydans, Pantoea citrea and Tatumella ptyseos. Scales, thrips, mites, mealybugs, ants and symphylids are the pests that commonly attack the plants.

  In Costa Rica, the pineapple industry uses large amounts of insecticides, which have caused health problems in many workers. Those workers are mostly poor migrants, often Nicaraguan, and they receive little compensation. Their wages decrease every time prices are lowered overseas. In 2016 the government declared that it would try to improve the situation, with the help of various other groups. Tropical fruit agriculture of this kind has historically been concentrated in so-called "banana republics."

  Pineapples exported from Costa Rica to Europe are often used as cover for narcotrafficking, and containers are impounded routinely at both ends of the route.

  In northern Costa Rica, pineapple cultivation has expanded into the Maquenque, Corredor Fronterizo, Barra del Colorado and Caño Negro wildlife refuges. These are protected areas but not national parks, so limited and restricted sustainable activities are allowed. Many plantations there lack the proper license, or began before the area was designated, before new regulations, or before the environmental regulatory agency Setena was created in 1996. The agency's registers show around 358.5 ha of plantations operating inside protected areas, yet satellite imagery from 2018 reports around 1659 ha, more than four times as much.

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