A cost-price between 162 and 132 VND/shoot (1 US
dollar=15,000 VND) is acceptable for farmers in the Mekong
Delta, because it is comparable with the price of plants
produced in traditional ways. The cost of a plantlet is
dependent on the cultivar and its size. Recently, in Viet Nam,
many commercial companies have sold FCayenne_ shoots to
farmers at 500 VND/plant. This is not cheap because the
propagules are imported from Thailand. The cost of shoots
produced by splitting stem at the Southern Fruit Research
Institute of Viet Nam is cheaper (287–297 VND/plant), but the
availability of shoots is often limited because of a low
multiplication ratio (average being 11 over a period of 6 10
months) (Lieu et al., 2004). After harvesting, mother plants of
the FQueen_ pineapple cultivar give many suckers which are
collected by farmers, thus forming the cheapest source of
propagules. This procedure cannot be applied to FCayenne_
because the latter cultivar gives only a few suckers per plant.
Moreover, the comparison is not always reliable because of
inappropriate price calculations. The production of sufficient
amounts of propagation material by suckers requires a large
land area. For the reasons mentioned, natural conditions for
micropropagation are promising to reduce costs, and open up
possibilities for application in Viet Nam.