Antigua Black Pineapple Project expands with shipment to SVG

A Black Black Pineapple Rehabilitation Project in Antigua is said to have marked a significant milestone on Wednesday of this week as agricultural officials prepared 50 pineapple suckers for shipment to St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) as part of an ambitious tissue culture propagation initiative.

According to a Facebook post by that country’s Minister of Agriculture, the preparation exercise which took place at the Extension Division, represented an important step in the project’s goal to multiply high-quality planting material for local producers, with 20,000 disease-free plantlets expected to return to Antigua before the end of 2025.

Technicians from the Plant Protection Unit conducted thorough inspections of the suckers, which were gathered from various farmers across the island, and provided the necessary documentation after verifying the chemicals used to sanitize them.

Additionally, a group of farmers, ministry officials and agricultural technicians will visit the Cades Bay Agricultural Station on Friday morning, March 21, to observe the progress of the rehabilitation project.

The initiative is designed to foster inclusion and partnership with local pineapple producers, reinforcing their role in ongoing efforts to restore and expand production.

The visit will provide farmers with an opportunity to engage with modern cultivation techniques, including the recently installed ferti-irrigation system, which enhances nutrient management and improves crop growth efficiency.

Since the project’s inception, over 4,000 Antigua Black Pineapples have been planted at the Cades Bay Station. Additional transplanting efforts scheduled for 2025 include 5,000 plantlets in April and another 1,000 in June.

The Antigua Black Rehabilitation Project is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (courtesy Antigua Observer).