POTENTIAL PINEAPPLE FOR LANDSCAPING IN MALAYSIA

Growing pineapple as an ornamental plant is new in Malaysia and preliminary work has been done to promote pineapple to be used in landscaping. A number of plants in MARDI’s pineapple germplasm were suitable as landscape plants. These include the variegated red leaves of Ananas comosus var. bracteatus and the miniature Ananas nanus. The former is more suitable grown as a bedding plant on a raised bed while the miniature could be grown in pots. In addition, materials generated from a breeding program also showed some ornamental values. Distributed among the population of F₁ progenies developed from piping-leaf parents are genotypes with fan-like crowns, multiple crowns and those with numerous slips. Some of the plants are off-types that have potential as landscape plants. In addition, tissue-cultured pineapple populations represent a good reservoir of pineapples with unique and such interesting characteristics as pretty colourations and ‘snaky plant’ with creeping growth habit that could be used for landscaping.