Striving to rehabilitate the Antigua Black Pineapple, IICA and its Partners coordinate the Transplanting of 5000 Tissue Culture Pineapples at Cades Bay Station.

St. John’s, Antigua & Barbuda 19th February 2025 (IICA) The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) with support from the Caribbean Agriculture Research Institute (CARDI), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other key partners coordinated the transferring and transplanting of 5000 tissue culture pineapple plant at Cades Bay Station, which is another milestone under the rehabilitation of the Antigua Black Pineapple project mainly funded under the IICA-Single Fund program. The objective aims to support one of the priority actions under the Ministry of Agriculture which relates to the rapid multiplication of pineapple planting materials to increase production.

Over the past several months several activities were carried out under the project which included procurement of 15,000 Antigua Black Pineapple Tissue cultured plantlets, receipt of plantlets in batches, strict nursery management protocols and land preparation of the project area.

Two weeks ago, CARDI started the hardening process, which entailed getting the plantlets acclimated to the open environmental conditions. The transfer and transplanting of 75 trays (5000 plants) of pineapple plants were completed at the Cades Bay Station on Wednesday 19th February. Those plants will be managed by the Ministry of Agriculture, with technical support from CARDI, IICA and other key partners who will ensure that all the agronomical practices are followed. The additional 10,000 plantlets will be transplanted to Cades Bay over 3-6 months in two intervals based on the age per batch received.

It is anticipated that within 1-2 years those 15,000 plants should be able to produce over 150,000 suckers which will be used for planting materials for pineapple fruit production across Antigua and Barbuda.  In 2025, with financial injection from the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, the project is expected to procure 20,000 tissue-cultured Antigua Black Pineapple, inputs and supplies, which will undertake a series of analytical tests such as DNA fingerprinting.