Advances in pineapple plant propagation

Abstract

Pineapple is one of the most important fruits, with large production in tropical and subtropical regions and great appreciation by consumers all over the world. The pineapple plant has many specific morphological, anatomical and physiological characteristics that determine crucial aspects of pineapple crop management, such as flower induction, water use and vegetative methods of propagation. The use of sexual reproduction of pineapple is restricted to breeding purposes carried out by research institutes looking for new hybrids with improved agronomic characteristics. Seeds are only produced if cross pollination among varieties occurs. Commercially pineapple has to be propagated by vegetative material, an asexual reproduction, without new combinations of genes. Some types of propagules are naturally produced by the plants and called conventional planting material. Its availability and quality depend on many factors, especially cultivar and environment. Management techniques of this material have been continuously developed and will be addressed. In addition to the conventional planting material, which in many situations is not sufficient to assure expansion or at least maintenance of the cultivated area, several other methods of vegetative propagation of pineapple have been studied and made available along the last decades and will also be discussed, involving techniques of stem sectioning, apical growing point gouging and chemical treatment for transformation of flowers into plantlets. Stem sectioning has been especially interesting, as it is mostly done using plant residues available at low cost, and is a rather simple method suited for multiplication and production of disease-free planting material in nurseries. Gouging and chemical treatment are less practiced, but can be applied in ratoon crops, thereby avoiding the loss of the first cycle fruit. Chemical treatment usually results in rather small plantlets, that must be further grown in nurseries before planting them in the field. And finally micropropagation will also be focused, as in vitro production of plantlets is a very important method of multiplication of new pineapple varieties, but this method yet has not been transformed into a common commercial way of pineapple propagation due to the final high cost and to the still high risks of incidence of somaclonal variations among the plantlets produced.

Production of shoots from ‘Smooth Cayenne’ pineapple crowns with nitrogen fertilization

“…The growth period for these plantlet can vary (REINHARDT; CUNHA, 1999;GOMES et al, 2003) for slip-type plantlet, from one to six months, and for shoot-type plantlet, from two to 12 months after the harvest of fruits (REINHARDT; CUNHA, 1999). In addition, it has been elucidated that conventional plantlet are more vigorous and they should have at least 30 cm to be considered suitable for planting (REINHARDT et al, 2018). Additionally, it was observed that the matrices whose shoots were 10 cm in size produced, simultaneously, from 3 to 6 shoots per crown, where most shoots could be harvested in the same weekly harvest.…”

“…Considering the above, the challenge is to increase the production of plantlet with superior characteristics to supply the scarcity of propagating material. To this end, several studies have been carried out to improve fast pineapple multiplication methods for the production of plantlet with superior vigor and health such as: micropropagation (OLIVEIRA et al, 2015), stem sectioning (COELHO et al, 2009;FREITAS et al, 2014) and breaking of the apical crown dominance (COELHO et al, 2007a;SANTOS et al, 2014;REINHARDT et al, 2018).…”

Strategies for vegetative propagation and viral cleaning of a miniature ornamental pineapple hybrid

“…Conventional micropropagation and micropropagation by etiolation of nodal segments are methods that have been previously studied for production of pineapple plantlets. Various protocols have been described in the literature (Kiss, Kiss, Gyulai, & Heszky, 1995;Guerra, Dal Vesco, Pescador, Schuelter, & Nodari, 1999;Barboza & Caldas, 2001;Carvalho et al, 2005;Souza et al, 2010;2012b;Santos, Barbosa, Vieira, & Carvalho, 2015;Reinhardt et al, 2018;Taha, Ibrahim, Gaafar, Zaied, & Shamma, 2019), but no previous study has compared the techniques in vitro, as done in this work.…”

Genetic control of leaf spinescence in BRS Imperial, Pérola, and Pico de Rosa pineapple cultivars

“…The main pineapple cultivar planted in Brazil (Reinhardt et al 2018), known as "Pérola" or "Branco de Pernambuco", has spiny leaf margins and vigorous growth, with long leaves and dark green color. Its fruit has a conical shape, mainly directed to the domestic fresh fruit market.…”