Urban backyards as a new model of pineapple germplasm conservation

The conservation of pineapple in urban backyards is an innovative strategy that aims to involve city residents. A program of this nature requires careful planning and monitoring because of the involvement of people who do not have technical knowledge. This paper reports the implementation and evaluation of 30 gardens in urban backyards in Cabaceiras do Paraguaçú, Bahia, Brazil, to establish the parameters to allow creating a model for pineapple germplasm conservation cells with the collaboration of urban residents. A questionnaire was applied in two steps to people interested in participating, from which it was possible to choose and evaluate a general profile of the participants. Thirty pineapple accessions from the Active Germplasm Bank (AGB) of the Embrapa were selected for testing in the gardens. Two production cycles were considered, during which quantitative and qualitative traits of the plants and fruits were evaluated. The data were compared with the characteristics of the same accessions in the Pineapple AGB and were analysed by mixed principal component analysis. With respect to adequate maintenance, 20 gardens were well cared for until the end of the assessments, five were reasonably well tended and five were lost, due to home remodelling or lack of care by the guardians. Despite the loss of the five gardens, no accession was totally lost, thanks to the experimental design with three plants of each accession in three different gardens. The plants preserved in the gardens did not differ from those maintained by the AGB, demonstrating the effectiveness of this conservation strategy.