Four varieties, Smooth Cayenne (SCay), MD2, and two CIRAD hybrids, Flhoran 41 (Flh 41) and Flhoran 53 (Flh 53), were grown at the CIRAD research station in Martinique under typical tropical climate (latitutde 15° N, longitude 62° W) on halloysite soils. Cultivation practices included liming (Ca2+, Mg2+) and foliar fertilizer applications (urea and potassium sulfate, K2O/N = 2.5) and iron as chelate. At harvest, control fruits were immediately frozen after peeling, whereas chilled fruits were stored at 8 °C for 1 week and then an additional week at room temperature (24 °C) before peeling and freezing. Fruits were harvested fully ripe (meaning edible with fully developed flavor without fermentation). Pineapples are nonclimacteric fruits, comprising 100−120 individual fruitlets and showing a strong maturity gradient from bottom to top. In addition, the external coloration frequently does not reflect the actual stage of maturity of the flesh. These characteristics are rendering difficult the use of an objective index of maturity when a varietal comparison is made. It should be noted that MD2 fruits tend to become translucent when fully ripe. The same tendency is observed in Flh 41 when the fruits are slightly over-ripe, whereas in Flh 53 and SCay, only very over-ripe fruits become translucent (data not shown). Harvest stage was chosen for control fruits instead of fruits stored at 24 °C for the same period, for two reasons. First, it is difficult to evaluate the exact time of storage at 24 °C that would reflect an equivalent senescence development with the fruits stored at 8 °C and then at 24 °C as cold delays senescence. Second, we observed in experiments on enzymatic activity evolutions during senescence that PPO and POD activities were not significantly different at harvest and after 10−12 days at 24 °C. Actually, they were very low in the case of PPO (data to be published).