Pineapple+recepie

=__Pineapple Harvesting__=

It is difficult to judge when the pineapple is ready to be harvested. The grower must depend a great deal on experience. Size and color change alone are not fully reliable indicators. Conversion of starch into sugars takes place rapidly in just a few days before full maturity. In general, for the fresh fruit market, the summer crop is harvested when the eye shows a light pale green color. At this season, sugar content and volatile flavors develop early and steadily over several weeks. The winter crop is about 30 days slower to mature, and the fruits are picked when there is a slight yellowing around the base. Even then, winter fruit tends to be more acid and have a lower sugar level than summer fruit, and the harvest period is short. Fruits for canning are allowed to attain a more advanced stage. But overripe fruits are deficient in flavor and highly perishable.

If the work is semi-mechanized, the harvesters de-crown and trim the fruits and place them on a 30-ft conveyor boom which extends across the rows and carries the fruits to a bin on a forklift which loads it onto a truck or trailer. Some conveyors take the fruits directly into the canning factory from the field. In most regions of the world, pineapples are commonly marketed with crowns intact, but there is a growing practice of removing the crowns for planting. For the fresh fruit market, a short section of stem is customarily left on to protect the base of the fruit from bruising during shipment. (information taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple)