History

Charles II presented with the first pineapple grown in England (1675 painting by Hendrik Danckerts)
The plant is indigenous to South America and is said to originate from the area between southern Brazil and Paraguay; however, little is
known about the origin of the domesticated pineapple (Pickersgill, 1976). M.S. Bertoni (1919)
[16]
considered the ParanParaguay
River drainages to be the place of origin of A. comosus.
[17]
The natives of southern Brazil and Paraguay spread the pineapple throughout
South America, and it eventually reached the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, where it was cultivated by the Mayas and the
Aztecs. Columbus encountered the pineapple in 1493 on the leeward island of Guadeloupe. He called it pia de Indes, meaning "pine of
the Indians,"
[18]
and brought it back with him to Europe
[19]
thus making the pineapple the firstbromeliad to leave the New World.
[20]
The
Spanish introduced it into thePhilippines, Hawaii (introduced in the early 19th century, first commercial plantation
1886), Zimbabwe and Guam. The fruit is said to have been first introduced in Hawaii when a Spanish ship brought it there in the
1500s.
[21]
The fruit was cultivated successfully in European hothouses, and pineapple pits, beginning in 1720.
John Kidwell is credited with the introduction of the pineapple industry to Hawaii. Large-scale pineapple cultivation by US companies
began in the early 1900s on Hawaii. Among the most famous and influential pineapple industrialists was James Dole who moved to
Hawaii in 1899
[22]
and started a pineapple plantation in 1900.
[23]
The companies Dole and Del Monte began growing pineapple on the
island of Oahu in 1901 and 1917, respectively. Dole's pineapple company began with the acquisition of 60 acres (24 ha) of land in 1901,
and has grown into a major company. Maui Pineapple Company began pineapple cultivation on the island of Mauiin 1909.
[24]
In 2006,
Del Monte announced its withdrawal from pineapple cultivation in Hawaii, leaving only Dole and Maui Pineapple Company in Hawaii as
the US's largest growers of pineapples.
In the US, in 1986, the Pineapple Research Institute was dissolved and its assets were divided between Del Monte and Maui Land and
Pineapple. Del Monte took cultivar '73114', which it dubbed 'MD-2', to its plantations in Costa Rica, found it to be well-suited to growing
there, and launched it publicly in 1996. (Del Monte also began marketing '7350', dubbed 'CO-2', as 'Del Monte Gold'). In 1997, Del
Monte began marketing its 'Gold Extra Sweet' pineapple, known internally as 'MD-2'. MD-2 is a hybrid that originated in the breeding
program of the now-defunct Pineapple Research Institute in Hawaii, which conducted research on behalf of Del Monte, Maui Land and
Pineapple Company, and Dole.