1.

Pineapple

The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a tropical plant with edible multiple fruit
consisting of coalesced berries, also called pineapples and approximately 1-2 meters tall
and wide. A fully grown pineapple plant has many leaves, in a sword shape arranged in
the form of dense compact rosette and the margin may or may not contain spine. The
morphology of pineapple is shown in Figure 1.1 and Table 1.1 shows the
commercialized pineapple in Malaysia

Figure 1.1: Morphology by Elfick (2007)

Table 1.1: Commercialized pineapples in Malaysia (Source: Muzium Nanas, Pontian)

Bil
1
2
3
4
1.1.1

Types of pineapple

The average yield

(MT/hectare)
Josapine
50
N 36
40
Moris
20-25
Gandol
60
Availability of Pineapple in Johor

Amount of plant
(tress/hectare)
35,800
32, 500
35, 800
43,500

According to Jabatan Pertanian Johor (2001), the total overall pineapple

cultivation area size in Johor is 7,816.22 hectares.

LPNM claims that, the

average yield of pineapples in Johor in 2011 is 80,389.22 matric tones over 96,
957.20 matric tones of pineapples in Malaysia. The statistic shows that the
pineapple production in Johor is the highest among the other states in Malaysia,
which covers 83%.

Thus, it shows that, Johor has an abundant source of

pineapple biomass for production of value added products.

Figure 1.2: The geographical distribution of pineapple plantation in Johor (Source:

Muzium Nanas, Pontian)

1.1.2 Proportion Waste from Pineapples

The only study of proportion waste from pineapples was done by Ketnawa and
co-workers (2012).

The experimental study was done on Nang Lae and Phu Lae

pineapple fruits. There is no study about the proportion waste on the commercialized
pineapple fruits in Malaysia yet. Thus, the study by Ketnawa and teams become a
benchmark for the proportion waste of pineapple fruits for this project. Figure 1.3
shows the waste from Nang Lae and Phu Lae pineapple fruits and Figure 1.4 shows
proportion of pineapples wastes.

Figure 1.3: Morphology of Nang Lae and Phu Lae pineapple fruits (A) and their wastes
(B) [1]

Figure 1.4: proportion of pineapples wastes

1.1.3 Conversion Technology

A)

Ethanol

Interest in the economic conversion of renewable resources into alcohol using

low cost substrate, such as pineapple waste, has been increasing since the last decade.
Waste from pineapple cannery has been examined for ethanol production and shown in
Figure 1.5.

Figure 1.5: Alcohol production from pineapple waste [2]

B)

*Citric Acid

Amandi and teams (2008) were found that, the citric acid production was 202.35
g/kg dried pineapple waste by Yarrowia lipolytica under solid state fermentation
conditions using pineapple waste.

C)

*Lactic Acid

: Lactic acid has an important position in the family of carboxylic acids because
of its application in both food and non-food industries. It is used as a preservative and
acidulant in food industries. Some researchers have used pineapple syrup, a food
processing waste, as low cost substrate for the production of lactic acid using
Lactobacillus lactis and enzyme invertase to hydrolyze sucrose into glucose and
fructose. They have reported the yield of 20 and 92 g/l from 20 and 100 g total sugars/l
(Ueno et al., 2003). Idris and Suzana (2006) used liquid pineapple waste as substrate to
ferment to lactic acid using Lactobacillus delbrueckii under anaerobic conditions for 72
h. They used calcium alginate as the immobilization matrix to produce maximum yield
of 0.7822- 0.8248 g lactic acid/g glucose under different conditions of temperature and
pH. Fungal production of lactic acid from pineapple waste resulted in 19.3 and 14.7g/L
lactic acid with Rhizopus arrhizus and R. oryzae (Jin et al., 2005).

[1] Pineapple wastes: A potential source for bromelain extraction

[2] Utilization of Pineapple Waste: A Review ATUL UPADHYAY1 ,JEEWAN

PRAVA LAMA2 and SHINKICHI TAWATA3