Recently I was reading the Wikipedia article for the pineapple, which contains this sentence:

A pineapple never becomes any riper than it was when harvested since it is a non-climacteric fruit.

Now, I eat a lot of pineapples. They're my all-time favorite fruit, and I almost always have one sitting on the kitchen counter. That's because the grocery store I shop at only sells very green and unripe pineapples, and because of that I have to let them sit in my warm and humid kitchen for at least a week until they're golden and soft and sweet enough for my liking.

I know from experience that pineapples absolutely continue to ripen after harvest. But, just to be sure, I did an experiment. I bought two pineapples at the same time, both the normal shade of dark green that I usually get. I chopped one up right away, and let the other ripen on the counter for a week. As expected, the unripe fruit was astringent, dry, and woody. And yet a week later when I prepped the other pineapple, it was nice and sweet like always.

So what gives? Is this a weird special case for bromeliads where since the new plant grows from the top of the old fruit, they're never truly "harvested" until you cut the top off? Or is there some other process at work? Or is the Wikipedia author merely misinterpreting the meaning of the term "climacteric"?

Edit: title typo, should say non-climacteric 🙄

by mvia4

2 Comments

  1. So this is definitely a bit confusing but I will answer at a general level what is my understanding. 

    They are indeed non climacteric. So the sugar content remains the same as when it was harvested and does not increase afterwards.

    However. Aging does cause softening and breaking down of the cell walls making it softer and more palatable (but not sweeter). The chlorophyll is also degraded changing it from green to orange. 

    So this does not mean the fruit does not change just that the sugar content is not changed

  2. TasteDeeCheese

    It’s probably so that the brom can have multiple ways to spread its offspring, through seed dispersal and vegetatively.

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