Frank Hess, age 11, of Santa Rosa, Calif., for his question:
DOES THE PINEAPPLE GROW ON A TREE?
A pineapple is a tropical fruit that is fragrant and juicy. It probably received its name because it looks very much like a large pine cone It isn't found on trees but grows on plants that are from two to three feet tall.
Each pineapple weighs between four and eight pounds. The fruit has a yellowish brown shell or skin and at the top is a group of small leaves called the crown. The flesh of the fruit is pale yellow and firm, though sometimes it can even be white. A pineapple plant has blue green sword shaped leaves that grow around a thick stem. The edges of the leaves of most varieties of pineapples have sharp spines. But the leaves of the Smooth Cayenne, the variety most widely grown because it is seedless, have no spines except at the tips.
Pineapples need a warm climate and well drained soil. Too much water can harm them. Hawaii grows more pineapples than any other region in the world. Plantations in that state produce about one fifth of the world's pineapples. Scientists believe that pineapples originated in Brazil. Europeans found them throughout most of South and Central America and the West Indies. Commercial production of the plants and fruit began during the mid 1800s in Australia, the Azores and South Africa. It wasn’t until the early 1900 that large scale production of pineapples started in Hawaii. Following Hawaii as leading producers of pineapples are, in order of importance, Brazil, Malaysia, Taiwan, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, South Africa and Australia.
Hawaiian pineapple growers use a machine called a harvester conveyor that simplifies the job of picking the fruit. This machine consists of a long boom or metal arm with a conveyor belt built into it
The boom, which is on a truck, moves through the pineapple plants and walking workers pick the fruit by hand and drop it on the conveyor belt. The belt carries the fruit to the truck.
At the cannery, the pineapples are washed and sorted by size. A machine called a Ginaca removes the shells, punches out the cores and cuts off the ends of the pineapples.
Next, the fruit is cut into slices or into pieces of various sizes. Then the fruit is put in cans, syrup is added and the cans are sealer). The unsweetened juice from the pineapple cores is also canned.
Pineapples are grown from any of three parts of a pineapple plant: shoots, slips and crowns. Workers insert the shoots, slips or crowns through plastic strips on the ground. They punch holes in the plastic with planting tools.
After planting, pineapple plants require careful cultivation. Machines do most of the weeding, spraying and fertilizing that used to be done by hand.
About 20 months after planting, the pineapples are ready to be picked. A pineapple plant bears one fruit for the first harvest and may bear two fruits for the second on third harvest. Most planters replant fields every two or three harvests.