Pineapple

Pineapple (Ananas comosus, Bromeliaceae)  is one of  the world’s most important commercial fruit crops in the world.

The earliest written references to pineapple are by explorers who discovered pineapple growing in the West Indies, where it was used for food and wine making. It was then reportedly disseminated by the Portuguese who introduced it  to Saint Helena shortly after their discovery in 1502. Soon after, they carried it to Africa and, by about 1550, to India. Before the end of the 16th century, cultivation of the plant had spread over most of the tropical areas of the world, including some of the islands of the South Pacific.

The tropical fruit has such worldwide appeal due to its juiciness, enticing flavour and high nutritional value. Some of these nutrients are calcium, potassium, vitamin C, carbohydrates, crude fibre, water among others. Its high fibre content also makes it good for the digestive system and as well helps in maintaining an ideal weight and balanced nutrition.

A pineapple can take up to 3 years to grow and mature into a plant but only pineapple is produced by a single plant in a single season. Costa Rica, Brazil, China, India, and Thailand are some of the world’s major growers of pineapple.

In order to increase the shelf life and to make pineapple juice and slices even during off-season, canning is the most popular method. Ripe and matured pineapples are washed, graded and peeled. Then, they are crushed in the crusher to obtain juice. In case of slices, after peeling, uniform slices are made on the slicer. Juice is then taken to vessels and boiled and certain preservatives (Potassium metabisulphate, Benzoic acid etc.) are added. It is finally taken to storage tanks and packed in bottles on vacuum filling machine. In case of slices, they are dipped in sugar syrup for about 3 to 4 hours. The slices are then put into sterilised lacquered cans. Lastly, the cans are cooled after sealing and labelling.

Sliced fresh pineapple fruit is frozen and placed in a drying chamber under vacuum. Heat is applied and water evaporates from the fruit while still frozen. The process causes the fruit to become light and crispy while still maintaining much of its original flavour. Dried pineapple is widely used by the confectionery, baking, and sweets industries.

A redundant product after harvesting, pineapple leaves are sold out by farmers to help earn extra income instead of discarding them as waste. This allows for more emphasis to be placed on how to explore different ways of fibre extraction and convert them into value-added products.

The fibre extracted from leaves of pineapple plant is called pineapple pal£. The pineapple leaves sides are scraped by scratching roller skates to dispose of the waxy layer. It then goes through the toothed roller with closely fitted cutting edges. The pineapple leaf delivers with numerous breaks on its surface for easy passage of retting micro-organisms.

Pineapple pale is widely used in the automotive industry because it is em-friendly, light-in-weight, non-toxic and also has good thermal strength.