The pineberry products showed on the SEO company’s sites were clearly not real products. Additionally, a search engine optimization company adopted Pineberry as its name just prior to the Waitrose announcement. Since the store chain had previously run “April Fools” ads for an obviously made up “pinana” (a pineapple banana), many assumed that the pineberry was a similar joke. In the year Waitrose was to initially offer pineberries on a limited basis, they announced the new fruit offering just prior to April 1. The UK grocery store chain Waitrose was the only supplier of pineberries to the UK market. Questions over the existence of pineberries arose after two events cast doubts on their reality. While the fruits are generally referred to as “pineberries,” the German word meaning pineapple strawberry, “ananaserdbeere,” is occasionally used to reference them as well. Their supplier is Holland’s Beekers Berries who grows them in very large, commercial glasshouses. The primary commercial cultivar is owned by strawberry breeder Hans de Jongh and the pineberries are sold by VitalBerry BV in the city of Made, Netherlands. They are produced on a very small scale in Europe and Belize and are not very profitable due to the small size of the pineberries (large pineberries are less than an inch big) and the low yield of pineberry plants (see the videos below to better gauge the size of the berries). The pineberry, or pineapple strawberry, is more of a novelty at present. The fruit produced by pineberry plants is very aromatic and has flavor that most say is reminiscent of pineapple while retaining the texture and feel of a strawberry.

After six years of plant selection and cultivation, the plant vigor and quality of the pineberry plants was improved, and the decision to begin growing them for commercial production was made. They did not find and rescue the pineberry from extinction in the wilds of Chile, as some have claimed. They discovered the source material in France. In fact, the specific strawberry variety whose genetics contribute to the striking appearance of the pineberry was “rescued” by a group of Dutch farmers. There are actually multiple different types of white strawberries (and new purple strawberries have been developed as well). The pineberry fruit is the result of cross-breeding, not genetic engineering as has been claimed by some. Like the modern Garden Strawberry ( Fragaria x ananassa), the pineberry is a hybrid of the wild South American strawberry Fragaria chiloensis, which grows wild in some parts of Chile, and the North American strawberry Fragaria virginiana. The word “pineberry” is a fusion of the words “pineapple” and “strawberry” and refers to a relatively new pale pink or pale orange to white strawberry cultivar that is adorned with red achenes (see the Strawberry Seeds page for more information). If you’d like to learn more of the pineberry’s history and other details, just keep reading… What is a Pineberry? IF YOU JUST WANT TO PURCHASE YOUR OWN PLANTS, CLICK HERE NOW.

Strawberry leaf scorch