The History of Pineapple Improvement

Man has been directing the genome of pineapple for a very long time. There is some evidence to suggest the domestication process started around 6000 years ago. The methods for breeding have of course changed considerably from the earliest times of pineapple domestication, but we still are seeking much the same goals. So much so that one of the cultivars to emerge from that early domestication, ‘Smooth Cayenne’, is still the predominant processing pineapple worldwide. The most modern pineapple genotypes today are only about eight generations removed from the early pre-Columbian village cultivars. These early pre-Columbian cultivars have in fact been the source of genetics for most pineapple breeding programs. There has been little effort to incorporate wild genetics into modern pineapple. There is in fact little need given the substantial level of heterozygosity that domestic pineapple exhibits. The high level of heterozygosity in pineapple has both been a great source of diversity for breeders and also a major bottleneck in progress. Almost all modern approaches to genome manipulation or breeding have been attempted in pineapple to overcome the problems associated with high heterozygosity including inbreeding, ploidy manipulation, mutation breeding and gene modification. Only gene editing and marker-assisted breeding have yet to make their impact in pineapple. This chapter looks at the history of pineapple breeding, the approaches used and lessons learnt in the hope we build on their successes to provide the world with more examples of the great diversity in pineapple