NATALIE Rowles from Ashley, Pinetown, an avid gardener and nature lover, has grown her own DNA-engineered pineapple. She tells us all about her sussessful experiment.
There is the story of the pineapple which I’ve created by using my own DNA on it, as one of my most remarkable experiments carried out in my backyard.
I bought a small ripe Queen’s pineapple and chopped off the top of the leaves – leaving a 1 to 2cm piece of pineapple ‘flesh’ still attached to the top leafy part of the pineapple.
After ‘skinning’ and cutting the pineapple into pieces for a fruit salad, I took the pineapple top and started to put my DNA onto the cut fleshy part still left on the leafy top part of the pineapple, by chewing a bit on the ‘flesh’, as this pineapple was so sweet and delicious!
Taking the pineapple peels and other fruit peels to my wormery, plus this pineapple’s leafy top, too, I was just going to plant this pineapple top the same way as I normally would do into my pineapple patch.
Then decided to do it slightly different by placing it on its side on an open soil patch to dry out for a few days before planting it.
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I was so surprised to see that the pineapple top has taken, after planting it out into a shallow hole in a raised bed near the tap, where I could tend to it easily.
The plant was growing so fast, creating long and smooth leaves without the normal sharp edges.
It then surprised me the following year, bearing a huge pineapple that was looking different in shape, having slightly different patterns on its smooth outer skin, growing extra long and smooth leaves, different to normal small queen’s pineapples’ leaves, too.
The skin was also thinner, less dark spots to dig out, and best of all, the inner core was soft enough to enjoy eating it, giving you more flesh than the original small pineapple with the hard inner core!
After cutting this delicious tasting pineapple off the plant, it produced another pineapple soon thereafter, surprising me as I was only expecting one pineapple during the season. So I’ve actually changed the whole pineapple’s life cycle using only my DNA as such!
By doing only this on the pineapple, I believe, will supply me with the necessary nutrients and health benefits for my own body. I therefore encourage the readers to create their own DNA pineapples to serve their own health needs too!
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This was one of the easiest and most delicious backyard experiments that I’ve carried out, and I am very happy to say that the first ‘child’ of the original bought small queens’ pineapple has borne many babies, grand children, as well as great grandchildren, which in turn have all retained the same DNA pineapple’s similarities as the very first one!
I’ve really created a ‘new” variety of pineapples I believe – if someone can just confirm it somehow.
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