Vanilla
Vanilla is the second-most expensive spice after saffron,[10][11] because growing the vanilla seed pods is very labour-intensive.[11]
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people cultivated the vine of the vanilla orchid that grows in trees. It was called 'tlilxochitl' by the Aztecs. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés introduced both vanilla and chocolate to Europe in the 1520s.[2]
Attempts to cultivate vanilla outside Mexico and Central America proved futile for 300 years. This was because the plants did not become pollinated. Pollination is the transfer of male pollen to the female stigma in order to fertilise the seed and is generally required to set fruit. With Vanilla this where the flavouring is derived. And try as they may they could not pollinate outside Mexico.
They did not realise that the pollination of Vanilla requires the symbiotic relationship between the vanilla orchid and its natural pollinator, the local species of Melipona bee. Much more Youtube.[3]Until the mid-19th century, Mexico was the chief producer of vanilla. In 1819, however, French entrepreneurs shipped vanilla fruits to the islands of Réunion and Mauritius in hopes of producing vanilla there.
In 1837, Belgian botanist Charles François Antoine Morren a professor of botany at the University of Liège in Belgium went to Mexico and worked out Vanilla was pollinated and the crucial role of the local bee. He went on to pioneer a method of artificially pollinating the plant. However, the method proved too slow and unworkable and was not deployed commercially.[4]
In 1829 a slave called Edmond Albius was born, He was orphaned from birth, as he lost his mother and never knew his father. Later, his master sent him to work with Fereol Bellier-Beaumont who initiated him into horticulture, and then botany. Albius spent most of his time following Beaumont around the estate as tended to his plants. Beaumont later wrote about Albius, that “this young black boy became my constant companion, a favorite child always at my feet.”
While living on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, he discovered at the age of 12 that the plant could be hand-pollinated quickly. It was this hand-pollination that enabled allowed global cultivation of the plant.[5]
He pollinated the vanilla orchid with a thin stick or blade of grass and a simple thumb gesture. With the stick or grass blade, field hands lift the rostellum, the flap that separates the male anther from the female stigma, and then, with their thumbs, smear the sticky pollen from the anther over the stigma. Albius’s manual pollination method is still used today, as nearly all vanilla is pollinated by hand. His discovery thereby allowed the Island of Reunion to become for a while, the largest world supplier of vanilla, and the cradle for the diffusion of his process.
Since this discovery was made by a child, who was black, and a slave, the invention was quickly contested by all the jealous people. The unscrupulous botanist Jean-Michel-Claude Richard would pretend to have taught the technique to the slave Albius three or four years earlier. The lie will reach its paroxysm when at the beginning of the 20th century, the French press go as far as claiming that Edmond Albius was white. Albius eventually gained his freedom with the abolition of slavery in 1848, but never got any financial benefit from his invention which made the fortune of planters and of the French economy. He died in misery in 1880.
After Edmond Albius discovered how to pollinate the flowers quickly by hand, the pods began to thrive. Soon, the tropical orchids were sent from Réunion Island to the Comoros Islands, Seychelles, and Madagascar, along with instructions for pollinating them. By 1898, Madagascar, Réunion, and the Comoros Islands produced 200 metric tons of vanilla beans, about 80% of world production. Indonesia is currently responsible for the vast majority of the world's Bourbon vanilla production[13] and 58% of the world total vanilla fruit production.
Three major species of vanilla currently are grown globally, all of which derive from a species originally found in Mesoamerica, including parts of modern-day Mexico.[6] They are:V. planifolia (syn. V. fragrans), grown on Madagascar, Réunion, and other tropical areas along the Indian Ocean; V. tahitensis, grown in the South Pacific; and V. pompona, found in the West Indies, and Central and South America.[7] The majority of the world's vanilla is the V. planifolia species, more commonly known as Bourbon vanilla (after the former name of Réunion, Île Bourbon) or Madagascar vanilla, which is produced in Madagascar and neighboring islands in the southwestern Indian Ocean, and in Indonesia.[8][9] Leptotes bicoloris used in the same way in South America.