Scientists Invent Coconut-Flavored Pineapples

Piña coladas just got a little bit easier to make.

For the past decade, scientists in Queensland, Australia, have been secretly toiling away in an underground bunker  above-ground lab, hard at work on achieving what many believed was impossible: creating a pineapple that tastes like coconut. And with the announcement yesterday that they’ve achieved their task, the once-simple world of fruit (and cocktail mixology, for that matter), will never be the same.

"Taste tests tell us that [it] is a winner — it has this lovely coconut flavor, which you won't find in any other pineapple in Australia," horticulturalist Garth Senewski told the Australian Broadcast Corporation, via the Daily Mail. "It's sweet, low acid, very juicy," he added.

The creation is called the AusFestival pineapple, and researchers estimate that it may take up to two years before it’s produced commercially. But it exists, and according to one scientist who’s tried it, it’s delicious.

Interestingly enough, the scientists involved didn’t set out to make a pineapple that tasted like coconut; they were just looking for a sweeter, lower-acid fruit. But they’ve unwittingly created the delicious hybrid, and the cat’s out of the bag.

Be on the lookout for a taste-test on these pages a couple years down the road. 

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