Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
7
Pineapple
Nimal Adikaram and Charmalie Abayasekara
INTRODUCTION
The pineapple (
Ananas comosus
L. Merril.) is the leading
member of the Family Bromeliaceae native to Southern Brazil
and Paraguay where wild relatives occur. The pineapple was
apparently domesticated by the Indians. The plant was carried
through Southern and Central Americas to Mexico and the
West Indies long before the arrival of the Europeans.
Pineapples are grown in Australia, Brazil, China, Hawaii,
Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, South
Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies. Brazil, China, Philippines
and Thailand are the main pineapple producers in the world
supplying nearly 50 % of the total output (FAO 2004). Total
production of pineapple was 14 million tons in 2003 (FAO
2004). Nearly 70% of the pineapple is consumed as fresh fruit
in producing countries.
The pineapple is a xerophytic, succulent, herbaceous
plant (Bartholomew and Malezieux 1994). The plant is a
perennial, flowers only once and dies after fruiting; a side
root then takes over. There are genetically diverse groups of
pineapple: the Cayenne group, Queen group, Red Spanish,
Abacaxi group and Maipure group (Leal and Soule 1977;
Grazia
et al
. 1980). The commercial varieties are classified
into three groups, the Cayenne group, Queen group and
Red Spanish, based on their morphological characters.
Smooth Cayenne is the world's most grown and largest
commercial group (Grazia
et al
. 1980) used in processing
and fresh fruit trade. Cayenne has spineless leaves and big-
ger plants, and produces fruits with shallow eyes and very
sweet taste. Queen has spiny leaves and somewhat smaller
plants and produces very sweet fruits with deep eyes.
Spanish group plants have spiny leaves and produce
medium-sized fruits with an acidic taste.
Pineapple is a collective fruit made up of berry-like
fruitlets developed from a whole inflorescence. The fruit is
made up of 100 to 200 fruitlets which are fused together on
a central axis or core. The fruit has a conical shape with
larger fruitlets at the base and smaller ones at the top. Flesh
of fresh or canned fruit is eaten as a dessert, and the juice
has a growing demand as a beverage. The pineapple has
long been one of the most popular of the noncitrus tropical
and subtropical fruits, largely because of its attractive
flavour and refreshing sugar-acid balance.
FRUIT COMPOSITION
The mature pineapple fruit contains 80-86% water and is a
good source of carbohydrates. The sugars are not distributed
evenly throughout the fruit; the bottom portion has more sug-
ars than the top crown end because it is composed of more
mature fruitlets (Sinclair 1993). The fruit has 0.5-2% acids.
Consumption of 100 g edible portion provides 218 KJ of
energy (Wenkam 1990). The fruit also has fibre. Potassium is
the most prominent mineral, followed by calcium (Table 7.1).
Pineapple juice contains S-sinapyl-L-cysteine, N-L-γ-
glutamyl-S-sinapyl-L-cysteine and S-sinapylglutathione in
substantial concentrations (Wen
et al
. 1999).
Twenty-nine odour-active compounds were detected in
an aroma distillate prepared from fresh pineapple, and five
of these were key odorants in fresh pineapple flavour:
4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone (HDF; sweet,
pineapple-like, caramel-like), ethyl 2-methylpropanoate
