Articles
BREEDING FOR EARLY FRUITING IN PINEAPPLE
The results obtained from experiments on early fruiting F1 progenies compared with standard cultivars indicated that there was little difference in time of fruit development from ‘forcing’ to ‘red-heart’ and also from ‘red-heart’ to fruit harvest.
The prospects for early fruiting lie in the ability to reduce the growing period from planting to ‘forcing’. Early fruiting progenies should, therefore, have the capacity to bear economic-sized fruit on small plant mass.
The majority of pineapple genotypes evaluated in the experiments showed linear relationship between fruit weight and plant weight, i.e. there is an expected dependency of fruit weight on size of the plant.
However, one hybrid selection, A04–16 did not show this relationship and dependency when ‘forcing’ was carried out on plants that were 10 months old.
This genotype was unique because it had the highest mean fruit weight but the smallest plant mass resulting in a very high fruit to plant ratio of 0.6 compared with others which had half this value.
There is good scope for reduction of crop cycle time in pineapple with A04–16 because it was not necessary to extend the growing period to get sufficiently large plants for production of economic-sized fruits.
When A04–16 was hormoned very early at 7 months, it could still bear economic-sized fruits of about 1.8 kg with a very efficient fruit: plant ratio of 0.83 which was about twice as high as other conventional cultivars.
Using A04–16 as a parent, there is potential in developing pineapple varieties which can bear on a strictly annual cycle.
Such varieties may be forced as early as 6–7 months after planting and the fruits can be harvested 5 months later.
Savings of 20–33% in management costs may be envisaged with such early, ‘annual’ varieties.