Fruits production of pineapple (Ananas comosus (L.) Merr.) MD-2 from vitroplants

Abstract

Pineapple (Anana comosus (L.) Merr.) is a species of high commercial demand, MD-2 is among the most promising varieties, which has captured the consumer appeal in recent years. For this reason micro-propagation techniques are used to achieve plants with better agronomic traits and seed production of excellent quality. In Cuba, although there have been some attempts to introduce the plantlets under production conditions of State Entities and Agricultural Enterprise, for various reasons the goal has not successfully been achieved. For this reason, we began working introducing vitroplants of pineapple MD-2 in collaboration with selected farmers and their families with a view to establishing agro-technics that allow to have an alternative planting material, procedures, necessary for productive reanimation pineapple cultivation and develop the technological basis to ensure continuous generation of planting material needed to maintain varietal biodiversity strategies and according to market demand. The results achieved to date demonstrate higher survival rates in vitro plants (90 %) during the first three months of field evaluation. The agrotechnic management established, allowed the increase of all variables evaluated in vitro plants (No. of leaves, No. of roots, length of major root and ¨D¨ leaf width, fresh mass and length of plant) tested in field conditions. It was also shown by bromatology analyzes, done to the fruits that they comply with such attributes internationally for pineapple MD-2 and that the agrotechnics applied to this crop influenced the results achieved.