Handbook of Vanilla Science and Technology

Dr Lubinsky, who has done extensive research on the genetic diversity of vanillas in Mesoamerica, collected vanilla specimens with Mr Sylvano Sho in Blue Creek Village, Toledo District, among other locations in Belize. He found numerous unique V. planifolia clones as well as specimens of V. odorata. When he left Belize, he left these accessions in the care of the Belize Botanic Gardens, which is located in the Cayo District and managed by Heather Duplooy. Several of these accessions were utilized in Dr Lubinsky’s work on the origin of V. tahitensis.

The origin of V. tahitensis was, until recently, a riddle without a very satisfying answer. It is not indigenous to the islands of French Polynesia, nor to the Philippines, the locale from which it was purportedly introduced to Tahiti by Admiral Hamelin in 1848 (Correll 1953;

Porteres 1954). V. tahitensis, in fact, has never been found in the wild (Porteres 1954; Lubinsky et al. 2008a).

Much of the vanilla cultivated around the world today, predominantly V. planifolia, followed the same conduit. Cacao based beverages, frequently made with vanilla, became all the rage amidst the Spanish elite in Mexico by the mid-sixteenth century: Chocolate could be imbibed on certain fasting days imposed by the Catholic Church (Koura 2004) and was substantial enough to assuage hunger. When cacao and vanilla in tandem were exported from Mexico to Spain, their consumption quickly became entrenched in the culture there. It was not long before knowledge of these New World novelties spread to other European countries. Then everyone wanted to grow vanilla and so cuttings of vanilla vines were transported to botanical collections in Europe and throughout the tropical colonies of the various European countries.

All of this vanilla dispersal originated with an Atlantic Ocean crossing, from Mexico to Spain, but the most direct route to the Philippines would have been across the Pacific. Spanish galleons did indeed ply this route, departing from Acapulco and sailing to Manila, from the latter half of the sixteenth century into the early nineteenth century. To the Philippines they carried silver and returned to Mexico with porcelain, ivory, silk cloth, and spices from Asia. In addition, they carried plants to the Philippines.

To transport vanilla plant stock from Veracruz, the cradle of the vanilla trade (Kouri 2004), to port in Acapulco would have meant a tortuous crossing of the Sierra Madre mountains or the swamps and dense jungle of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. It would have been more practical then to collect plant stock on the Pacific littoral, specifically from Guatemala where cacao and vanilla were cultivated. Large amounts of Guatemalan cacao were transported overland via mule routes in the late sixteenth century to markets in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Mexico City (Coe and Coe 1996). Thomas Gage described, in the 1630s, the cacao cultivation of the Suchitepequez region of Guatemala and the spices grown there that were used to flavor cacao-based beverages, which included vanilla (Thompson 1969). Francisco Fuentes y Guzman’s Recordacion florida, from 1690, describes the methods used to plant vanilla in Yzquintepeque (Escuintla), Guatemala. The gathering of vanilla plant stock from a location so distant from Veracruz could have resulted in the collection of material that was genetically divergent from that which could be found in Veracruz (Lubinsky et al. 2008a).

Theories have existed for some time as to the origin of V. tahitensis, some suggesting that it is a hybrid of V. planifolia and another species, such as V. pompona (Porteres 1954) or a

V. pompona-V. odorata complex (Porteres 1951; Soto Arenas 1999). Studies have since confirmed that while V. tahitensis and V. planifolia are very closely related genetically, the genetic distance between V. tahitensis and V. pompona is nearly three times greater than that between V. tahitensis and V. planifolia (Bory 2004; Duval et al. 2006). Furthermore, it has been noted that the dimensions of the V. tahitensis leaf are exactly intermediate between those of V. planifolia and V. odorata leaves (Soto Arenas, 2006). With all this in mind, Dr Pesach Lubinsky set out to determine the parentage of V. tahitensis by subjecting several different species of vanilla to DNA analysis. Dr Lubinsky thought, based on the morphology of the V. tahitensis leaf and flower, that it looked like something in between V. planifolia and